Clause 4
NHS Redress Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
John Baron (Shadow Minister, Health; Billericay, Conservative)
I hear what the hon. Lady says, but the Bill clearly provides a mechanism by which valuable lessons will not be lost to the NHS. The Bill will be one of the main avenues to a change in the culture of the NHS and I am not sure that the other mechanisms to which she refers exist, or that they are as rigorous as they should be.
Members on both sides of the House want the Bill to play a major part in changing NHS culture to be more open, so that lessons may be learned, so that explanations and apologies may be given where due, and so that there is the option of compensation—we do not rule that out, as can be seen in the Bill.
The bottom line, however, is my worry that if we accepted the hon. Lady’s amendment, there could be valuable lessons that would not be learned because the only trigger given by the amendments to proceed with the redress scheme would come from the person directly involved—the person with the grievance. We all know that compensation is only part of the scheme. If people do not want it, that is fine. They do not have to have it. We know that they want an explanation and apology, and want to know that the lessons learned are not lost.
The investigation is, therefore, a matter of public interest. That is consistent with the Inquiries Act 2005. I will quote a sentence from that Act that seems to bring that point out. It is from the explanatory notes to section 2, which is entitled “No determination of liability”. It says:
“The aim of inquiries is to help to restore public confidence in systems or services by investigating the facts and making recommendations to prevent recurrence, not to establish liabilities or to punish anyone.”
That is the key point about the redress scheme. The purpose is to restore public confidence in systems or services and to ensure that we learn the lessons so that the mistakes are not repeated and, as a result, we have a better health service. If we restricted the triggering of the redress scheme to the individual concerned, we would risk relegating the importance of the scheme as an attempt to change the culture and we would not achieve our aim.
In short, in our view the issue is one of public interest and of ensuring that lessons are not lost. By restricting the triggering of the scheme to the one individual who suffered the grievance, we would risk losing the possibility of learning from those lessons.