Clause 16
Health and Social Care Bill
7:30 pm
Stephen O'Brien (Shadow Minister, Health; Eddisbury, Conservative)
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. Her experience and practice in the profession gives her a particular authority. She reinforces a clarion call from nurses to be allowed to do what they know to be the right thing in order to give the best care and protection to patients.
There has been a series of reheated promises from 2003 to the present day, including promises on the appropriate provision of single rooms and isolation facilities for infected patients. The I gave all come from press releases from the Department itself over the past five years, yet there has been a significant failure to deliver. In the Bill, the Committee has an obligation not to duck the issue, not to try to pretend that it is not happening, not to be too sympathetic to the Government and not to fail to embarrass the Government. The Government happen to have been the people on watch during this failure, so they must take it in the neck, and it is right that we hold their feet to the fire. The amendments are an opportunity to do just that.
Back in 1998, during the Labour party’s first year in power, isolation rooms were turned into offices, and by 2003 there were very few trusts with proper isolation facilities. I shall not take up the Committee’s time by reeling off the statistics, but I would not put this argument to the Committee unless it was well supported. In 2005, there had been little progress on isolation facilities; in 2007, three quarters of trusts still lacked isolation facilities; and as we reach 2008, fewer than 50 hospitals have had a deep clean. On top of that, money has been taken from local NHS trusts to pay for it.
In the light of that failure, there is a strong argument for the CQC to report regularly to Parliament on the Government’s performance, as amendment No. 16 proposes. I hope that the Government do not lack the confidence to accept that proposal and that they will regard the amendment as a part of the frank accountability that is expected both by people whom they wish to see in receipt of great health care, and by all of us, so that we can be confident that the Government tackle the problem in the right way.
While debating this group of amendments, I should alert the Committee to the fact that there is no new money backing up the Government’s proposals. I am sure the Committee well knows the following arguments, but the Department of Health originally said that deep cleaning could cost as much as £50 million, and then admitted that the figure was only an indicative amount. The Department also admitted that strategic health authorities will be expected to manage the funding of the programme from within their own regional financial plans. Now, the Government have gone even further and confessed that the money will be found not even by SHAs; instead, local NHS trusts will foot the bill.
On the first deep clean at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust, which is clearly of great topical import, the Department said:
“The funding for deep cleaning at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is coming from primary care trust lodgements held at the South East Coast SHA for strategic purposes.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2007; Vol. 468, c. 1316W.]
So we have that from the Government themselves. Amendment No. 16 seeks to ensure that there is genuine commitment to back up the Government’s rhetoric.
Amendment No. 14 is a probing amendment that arises from a concern about the Bill as drafted. Why has the Minister opted for the measure as drafted, rather than a statement of names, for example MRSA or C. diff? Is it sufficiently narrow to exclude non-health care associated infections, but sufficiently broad to capture health care associated infections? There is a further political concern, given the Secretary of State’s statutory influence over the commission, that as new “super-bugs” arrive—as sure as eggs are eggs, they will—the Secretary of State will try to prevent them from being treated as health care associated infections by the commission, in order to massage the Government figures. The Committee is surely under an obligation not to let the Government have licence to do that. The health and safety of patients is too important to allow that risk to leave this room. Obviously if the matter is left to regulations, the Secretary of State still has the power to do nothing about it—it is power that matters—but at least if amendment No. 14 is accepted, he loses any clandestine power he might have.
Amendment No. 15 arises out of the incidents at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells. Although it would not protect against the delays that happened there, as there were delays in the publication of the Healthcare Commission report on compliance with the hygiene code, it would give right hon. and hon. Members an alert as to when action is taken by the commission, and as such would lead to freer and, hopefully, franker debate in Parliament. Amendment No. 25 seeks to generate a similar report as regards notices served on service providers.
The Minister needs to answer a number of questions in this area. He must also grab the opportunity provided by the amendments to accept our earnest intent to give effect, through those who are best qualified to help it happen, to efforts to tackle one of the most appalling concerns that people have about our health service. They fear that when going into a health care setting, they risk coming out either with a hospital acquired information or, worse still, not coming out at all because they will succumb to it.
We must find a way to support the Government in achieving our aims. We cannot wait for another Government. We have to get on with it. The amendments give us that opportunity. I genuinely hope that the Minister will not think that I am just taking an opportunity to have a good old bash at him and his team. Far from it. This problem is of such importance—we see this all across our constituencies. Like other hon. Members, I have a number of constituents who have either lost loved ones through hospital acquired infections or who continue to suffer from very serious conditions that they acquired when they should have been being treated. I hope that the Minister will take very seriously what we propose in the amendments, which are central to the integrity of the Bill. Unless the Minister can satisfy us on this, we will press them to a vote.