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NHS Redress Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for his interest in the subject, but I urge him further to consider that publication of the findings should be written into the Bill. Anonymity can be preserved; there is no need for names of clinicians, health service workers or patients to be in the published account; but it needs to be made public.  Otherwise, we will still have the atmosphere of secrecy within trusts and run the risk of people feeling so cross that things have happened, and people in the community outside do not know about it, that we will have more whistleblowers. The Minister thinks that there are far too many whistleblowers already; I think that there are far too few; we disagree on that. However, I am grateful that he will take the amendment away to reconsider it. I hope that that provision will be written into the Bill. I am still unhappy about the issue of the specified person. That will still increase the atmosphere of secrecy and the feeling that everything must be kept in-house. As someone who had management responsibilities before I left the health service as well as my clinical responsibilities, I can envisage the advertisements going out for that specified person who will be the chief investigator of the NHS redress complainants. I can imagine him or her setting up their office, filing cabinets, assistants and secretaries and setting up their little department. I am concerned that we can glibly say: ““There should be someone within a trust who is responsible for this””. I know from experience that that usually means another mini-department being set up and more management. So I still think that the specified person should be someone from outside the trust.