Clause 6
NHS Redress Bill [Lords]
4:15 pm
Siôn Simon (Birmingham, Erdington, Labour)
I do not know what point my hon. Friend has reached in his remarks and how much else he will go on to say, but it is worth making the point that he has chosen to focus on clause 12 as the substance of the issue. Lots of outside organisations have taken an interest. It does not seem to me that clause 12, or the Tory scheme, is the substance of the issue at all. The Tory scheme seems at best to be a distraction, and probably most realistically a rather opportunistic and ultimately irrelevant separate scheme for the sake of having a separate scheme.
The substance of the issue is how we can best amend a very good Bill, going with the grain of some very progressive developments, by introducing an element of independence. Unlike the Tories, I do not mean a whole army of investigators. I mean some sort of jointly instructed medical expert who is independent. I will come on to that should I catch your eye later,Miss Begg. Opposition Members may mean all kinds of things by independent schemes but I do not think very many people take this seriously and I urge the Minister to not get too bothered about it.