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NHS Redress Bill [Lords]

We have heard a very powerful speech that goes to the heart of the issue, which is the patient experience. It is not possible for the House to focus too much on the position of someone who has been wronged by the system and has a great sense of grievance. In the system today, as the Government have described, such people all too often feel that their complaint is not taken seriously, they feel that an explanation has not been provided and they do not receive an apology. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), I recognise that the Government and the Minister are sincere in their desire to create a decent redress scheme. Unfortunately, the more I have seen of the Bill and its proceedings, the clearer it has become that it is fundamentally flawed. Fault and fact finding will not be separated. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) is right to challenge the notion that the NHS investigates itself. It has been used by Opposition Members to sum up the issue, and it is technically correct. I put it to the hon. Gentleman—I know that he takes a great interest in this matter and is sincere in his views—that the problem is not that the NHS investigates itself but that the trust that is responsible for letting down the individual patient ends up investigating the case. There are trusts that are poorly run—fortunately not many—trusts in which mistakes happen and trusts that have a culture that is less than adequate. Where the local community feels that that is the case, where individuals have been negligently treated by the trust, the justice that they will receive under the Government’s golden new system is that that trust will investigate itself. That is at the core of our objections to the Bill.