Clause 15 - Code of practice: improvement notices
Health Bill
10:00 am
Jane Kennedy (Minister of State, Department of Health; Liverpool, Wavertree, Labour)
For the avoidance of any doubt in the minds of members of the Committee, I declined the invitation to communicate electronically with them, either on Christmas day or on any day during the Christmas break. I undertake to read the Hansard record of our conversations, so long as my private office can get the box to me before the ferry departs on my last working day.
The Healthcare Commission has a key role in assessing the NHS and encouraging it to improve its performance. We have agreed that. In light of that supportive role, proposed new section 53A(4) would provide a power for the commission to recommend means to remedy the situation when an NHS body is failing. It is for the Secretary of State—and Monitor, in the case of foundation trusts—to consider what sanctions should be imposed, if necessary, where an NHS body has failed to comply with an improvement notice.
The improvement notice is a new and important power for the Healthcare Commission, one which will provide it with an interesting way of interacting with the organisations that it is inspecting. Special measures might include anything that the Secretary of State, or Monitor, thinks necessary to put things right as quickly as possible. That will be the focus of the effort. As we have discussed, such measures may include practical assistance or organisation support. For example, as the explanatory notes mention, the Secretary of State could enlist the help of the director of infection prevention and control from an NHS trust that has successfully implemented the code. That individual could advise a trust that is failing about how their trust put the code into practice and how the code could work.