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Health and Social Care Bill

I do not think that there is any disagreement about the seriousness of this issue and how important it is to get it right. Perhaps I may refer to paragraph 10 on page 64 of the consultation document, which states, "““Ensure that people and their relatives and carers are aware of and can use, with support where needed, and without prejudice to their care and treatment, simple and clear arrangements for the handling of comments and complaints. Ensure that complaints about failures to ensure people’s health, safety and welfare are investigated and resolved promptly and effectively. Learning from complaints is reflected in risk management, quality assurance and clinical governance””." Perhaps I may refer to a remark I made earlier: the commission will be able to use a variety of methods to check whether the complaints procedures are useful. Indeed, we expect that it will use many of the methods already being used by CSCI, such as case tracking, to see whether an individual has been served properly and the complaint properly articulated and handled. Finally, I draw the Committee’s attention to the memorandum submitted to the Committee in another place, which I will circulate to those who may not have read it, from Ann Abraham, Parliamentary Ombudsman for the UK and Health Service Ombudsman for England. In that memorandum, she says that she fully supports these proposals and is gearing her organisation up to provide an independent second stage for complaints not satisfactorily resolved at a local level.