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Health and Social Care Bill

I think we all agree that it is vital that complaints are dealt with effectively. Having listened carefully today and at Second Reading, I think that most noble Lords have also agreed that complaints are best dealt with and resolved locally, where there is familiarity with the issues and organisations involved. The current second stage of the NHS complaints process, with external consideration by the Healthcare Commission, has lengthened the overall process for handling complaints. The Healthcare Commission’s series of reports, entitled Spotlight on Complaints, demonstrates that having an independent body with powers to review complaints can also discourage some organisations from doing a thorough job and resolving them at a local level. So several factors need to be taken into consideration. Neither the Healthcare Commission nor CSCI supports the idea of the Care Quality Commission having a role in dealing with individual complaints, and neither does the Health Service Ombudsman, who is gearing up to be the second stage complaints receiver. We therefore want to put the emphasis on ensuring that in the first instance all providers operate good complaints handling procedures, which encourage effective local resolution and enable providers to use information from complaints to improve service delivery, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said. As part of contract monitoring, PCT and local authority commissioners should also monitor how well the providers from which they commission services respond to complaints and take appropriate action when the response falls below an acceptable standard. This information on complaints-handling can therefore be used to inform subsequent commissioning decisions. As I have said before, we believe that the best way in which the Care Quality Commission can support these aims is through the registration requirements, subject to the feedback from the ongoing consultation. I wondered how long it would take me to refer to the consultation document. The paragraph about responding to people’s comments and complaints specifies that there should be clear, simple arrangements for handling complaints and dealing with them. The Care Quality Commission will thus have a very important role in assessing how well providers are handling complaints. It will be able to use a variety of methods for checking whether providers are complying with requirements. It may use case tracking, as CSCI does, to see whether the service that an individual receives, or the way a complaint is handled, meets the individual needs of the people receiving care. There will of course be an independent view through the ombudsman—