Clause 6
NHS Redress Bill [Lords]
5:45 pm
John Baron (Shadow Minister, Health; Billericay, Conservative)
We will come to some of those details later, and I shall address them then, but it is important to remember that we are dealing with enabling legislation. That is why there was little detail in the Government’s original proposals. Can the hon. Lady find the extent of detail that she is asking of our proposals in the Government’s original Bill? If so, I would be interested to see it. We are talking about principles and how best we can ensure independence.
It might not be obvious to the Government, but it is obvious to us that if one restricts the functions of the scheme as we would envisage it, without adding, and simply confines it to fact finding, and does not involve it in the second-stage process, it is difficult to argue that it will cost more. The system is in place; a system of fact finding has to be in place. The Minister has just accepted that we have to have a fact-finding stage before we can get to the fault finding. All we are saying is: restrict the system to fact finding. The question is who should run it. I shall return to the point about costs in a while. [Interruption.] I think that I shall regret this but I will give way.