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Learning Disability Services (Cornwall)

On the first group of questions that the hon. Lady asked, the Healthcare Commission said that it believed that the situation was unusual—not only in relation to the extent of the outrageous abuse that was taking place, but in the sense that, although the NHS trust claimed to be offering treatment and assessment services, it was actually providing something in the nature of a long-stay residential home that, if it was going to provide services, should have been registered with CSCI. We will not know until we have conducted the national audit whether there are other organisations in that unusual position or others not in compliance with the national recommendations. At this stage, we have no reason whatsoever to think that the situation in Cornwall is replicated in large numbers of organisations in other parts of the country. The hon. Lady asked why the failings were not picked up earlier in inspections by either the Healthcare Commission or CSCI. That matter is addressed, in part, in the report of the two organisations. In part, there is the rather unusual structure of the trust and the fact that, after the earlier merger of the provider trusts, responsibility for learning disability services was not passed to the social services department of the county council, as it was in most other parts of the country. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health will discuss that matter further with the two commissions. As for why the management failings went unnoticed and the complaints in 2001 and 2003 were so inadequately dealt with, that comes down to issues about board governance. In line with the Healthcare Commission recommendation, we will now review that matter by means of the external independent review of the board’s operation that we will be commissioning very shortly.