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Learning Disability Services (Cornwall)

We have announced our intention to merge the Healthcare Commission and CSCI by 2008. In the meantime, however, the two organisations are working together much more closely, and we will continue to ensure that they do so in anticipation of the merger and, indeed, even before that takes place. The hon. Lady is quite right about the desirability of unannounced inspections. As the Healthcare Commission and CSCI operate on the principle of better regulation, they have already ensured that their inspections are based on a proper risk assessment, complemented by both random and unannounced inspections to pick up problems. The hon. Lady referred to the problem, which was particularly prominent in Cornwall, of people investigating complaints about matters for which they were responsible or in which they had colluded. That is completely unacceptable, and it should be standard good practice for the board of any trust that provides services to ensure that complaints are investigated. When they are investigated internally, that should be done by someone who is not implicated in the matters to which the complaint relates. As for ensuring that proper attention is given to complaints even from a single user or family, we have already taken steps to strengthen the NHS complaints procedure. From my own constituency experience, I have been impressed by CSCI’s response to concerns—for example, about the treatment of a vulnerable elderly person—raised by one family, and by the way in which it has looked at the situation in the care home or whatever is the subject of complaint. We certainly need to ensure that the voice of the most vulnerable people in our community is heard by the staff who look after them, by the board responsible for the organisation that employs those staff, by commissioning organisations and by the regulators. As Members of Parliament, we can assist with that process, but we must ensure, too, that the regulatory and complaints system is as it should be, and that is what we are doing.