Clause 6
NHS Redress Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
John Baron (Shadow Minister, Health; Billericay, Conservative)
The Minister raised two issues. The first was about clause 12(1) and its mention of “investigators”. Obviously, we cannot have just one investigator in the whole country to determine such issues. A number of investigators around the country will fulfil the role, but it will result in only one investigator per scheme. That brings me to the Minister’s point about cost. We must not forget that the cost is not additional but inevitable, since there has to be an investigation whether it is carried out by the NHS Litigation Authority, the trust or independent investigators. The cost is established, but the question is who sits at the top and who oversees the fact-finding stage. We suggest that NHS redress investigators are at the top, independently chosen and independent by nature, to ensure that the scheme is given independence.
The structure exists anyway, and the redress scheme has an inevitable cost. There has to be an investigation, and it is merely a question of who sits at the top.