Clause 15
Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]
1:45 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
Again, these are probing amendments to try to get to the definitions of exactly who is covered within various health-related activities. We have dealt mostly with educational establishments until now, and these three amendments are designed to ensure that just about every health provider who should be included is included, and that that is clear in the Bill. Again, this is a bit of a grey area. I am sure that the Minister will be able to give those assurances, but we need them on the record.
Amendment No. 139 would add a further qualification of “NHS body”. The national health service is an increasingly complicated and fragmented body these days. We know that it relies on a good number of private, independent and not-for-profit providers from outside for operations and other services. There are shortcomings in the explanatory notes, because the note to clause 15 does not mention that. The only body it refers to is NHS Professionals.
My reading of subsection (2) as drafted is that the only people covered are those who are directly on the payroll of a hospital, primary care trust and so on. If that is so, what is the status of a private firm providing cataract operations and other providers of therapies, such as physiotherapy, in a hospital, domestic or surgery environment who are not directly on the payroll of a hospital or primary care trust but have been contracted by that hospital or primary care trust for a certain number of services? The amendment would also cover single-handed employers, so I am not seeking to cover only firms that provide those services and would be responsible for their own staff. There are occasions when operations and treatments are contracted out to a single-handed provider.
We know what certain single-handed GPs in the form of Dr. Harold Shipman can get up to. He did not just abuse his patients, he killed them. Obviously, that is one of the most extreme examples, but some single-handed providers contracted by certain health trusts are not GPs and would not be covered by the safeguards that GPs and others in the NHS have.
In the mental health field, freelance consultants tend to offer various cognitive behavioural therapies and other forms of talking therapy and counselling. They are not employed by an NHS trust, but are contracted by it—if they are lucky enough to be able to get hold of one—to provide those services. The clause does not appear to cover such individuals, and I think that it should. What is the difference when that private counsellor is contracted to a mental health trust by an employee of the trust and is providing identical services? Will the Minister justify why they should be treated differently?
Amendment No. 140 is a probing one; I am not calling for an enormous extension to the number of people covered by the provisions, but a question mark hangs over unpaid workers. The NHS relies on a great many volunteers—leagues of friends and people who regularly offer their assistance to vulnerable people. That assistance can include counselling services and driving minibuses to take vulnerable people to and from their homes. We need to be assured that, without making it so onerous and prescriptive that people would not want to volunteer—we must be very cautious about that—there will be checks and balances.
I have qualified employment therefore as “paid or unpaid” because those people are retained effectively by a hospital or PCT, but strictly speaking are not employed. What facilities are available for the monitoring of volunteers and other unpaid people who offer their services, and who have frequent and continuing contact with vulnerable groups of people?
On amendment No. 141, I am sure that there is a perfectly clear explanation, but it is not in the Bill or the explanatory notes. Seven NHS bodies are defined but there is no reference to a mental health or social care trust. Perhaps by a definition somewhere in the Bill of which I am unaware, such bodies come under a special health authority—I do not know. Either way, they need to be included, because patients of those particular trusts are probably the most vulnerable people of all in the NHS. So the amendment is a probing one to see how a mental health trust, or a social care trust—many are increasingly becoming known as the latter, given the joint operation between social services and mental health trusts—will be covered in the Bill. One would expect them to be in the list in subsection (3), but they are not.