Clause 12
Health Bill [Lords]
11:15 am
Stephen O'Brien (Shadow Minister, Health; Eddisbury, Conservative)
I have a few questions concerning the health service commissioner. What assessment have the Government made of any increase in work load and how have they resourced that? I discovered during proceedings on the Health and Social Care Act 2008 that although the Government are able to adjust the responsibilities of the ombudsman through legislation such as this, the resource of the ombudsman is not delivered through the money motion of the Bill but must be voted directly by Parliament.
Can the Minister confirm that the ombudsman will not be limited to maladministration in this area? When one talks to the ombudsman, one finds that they do not believe that they are. It is important, however, given that most MPs who deploy the ombudsman on behalf of their constituents tend to think that the ombudsman’s remit is limited to maladministration. We must be clear about the expectation here, given that there is no alternative appeals process.
The Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen), told me earlier this month, in response to a written parliamentary question:
“The scope and remit of the parliamentary and health service ombudsman to consider complaints has not been changed by the abolition of the Healthcare Commission.”—[Official Report, 9 June 2009; Vol. 493, c. 839W.]
Will the patient in receipt of a direct payment be able to complain about anything in the care package—the commissioning and providing, or overpayment and underpayment, for example—rather than simply the administration of that package?
Thirdly, what is the hierarchy of complaints? Last year saw the removal of the complaints function from the Healthcare Commission, now the Care Quality Commission, which removed people’s ability to push complaints about things other than maladministration beyond their own trust. In the case of direct payments, if the patient is the commissioner, do they lose the right to complain through the PCT? Is their only recourse to complain to themselves, and to the ombudsman? I hope the Minister can give us more clarity about how this will work.