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Health Care-Associated Infections

Well, I can only say that the allegations were about £300,000, and £1.1 million into a pension, although those are allegations. The figures have not been released and I have no way of verifying that. What happened was disgraceful, whatever settlement was received. However, families who have lost relatives have asked the police to investigate that chief executive, so I shall be careful in what I say, as I would not want to affect that. When the head of the NHS recently appeared before the Select Committee on Health, I asked a question about that chief executive. The implication was that he had not quite gone voluntarily, and might have been helped on his way. That is in the minutes as a matter of record, as any hon. Member who reads them will clearly see. My point is that if the person in charge is not doing their job, there is a knock-on effect on everyone else and a price to pay, and that price is too high for our constituents. However—this will come as a shock to my side, who should please forgive me—I want to say thank you to the Secretary of State, who has agreed to look into the case of that chief executive. I believe that it might be too late to stop any payments, but I would be grateful if that could be looked into, and if the correspondence, for which I am also grateful, could be passed on. I am not going to list the things that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) mentioned earlier, but if we do not tackle the problem in a number of different ways, we will be letting down the people who put us in this place. We owe it to them and to ourselves—we could all be patients—to rectify the problem. Let us do it now. That will have to come from the top—from the Secretary of State.