NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1:"Before Clause 1, insert the following new clause—" ““METHODS OF REDRESS    The ways in which redress may be sought are through— (a)   the National Health Service Litigation Authority, (b)   a specified dispute resolution service independent of the health service in England or Wales as defined under section 6(2A) and (2B), (c)   civil proceedings, and (d)   a redress scheme as defined in this Act.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, it is some considerable time since Members of this House considered this matter in Grand Committee. The intervening time has been used extremely wisely—the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and myself have had the opportunity to meet a number of the professional bodies such as the NHS Litigation Authority, ACHCEW and others. They have generously spent time explaining to us a great deal of the background to the Bill—I believe that the Minister knows that we have had that information. I think he would agree that that process will turn out to be beneficial to the whole House as we move on to the next stage of the Bill. At the outset of our proceedings, I apologise for the absence of my colleague and noble friend Lady Neuberger, who noble Lords will know has done a great deal of work on this matter. My noble friend is abroad fulfilling a commitment she had undertaken before she became a Member of your Lordships’ House. It is a matter of considerable regret to her and that she is not with us, and to me, given her knowledge and expertise on this subject—as will become evident throughout the afternoon. It is correct at the beginning of our discussions to go back to where we left off at the end of Grand Committee proceedings. Throughout Grand Committee, we returned time and again to our central concern about the Bill: the lack of independence in the process. I put on record my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for two lengthy letters that he sent to me and to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in which he addressed in great detail a number of concerns that we had raised. However, the central point about which we were at odds with the Government—the independence of the redress scheme—was not addressed entirely satisfactorily in those letters. That is why we have tabled a number of amendments that we will discuss in some detail this afternoon, which set out an alternative way in which the redress scheme could be made to work with a greater degree of independence, which we believe is crucial to the integrity of the scheme and the esteem in which patients will hold it. Those arguments are principally captured in Amendments Nos. 22, 23, 26 and 42. In essence, as I and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, have set out in detail, we take on board some of the criticisms that the Government have made of our earlier proposals and ensure that there is a two-stage process for people seeking redress under the scheme. The first part of that is an independent finding of fact. We will set out later how that should be done. Once a report that covers that finding of fact is made available, someone who wants to take the matter further has a number of options. The reason for moving the new clause now is to set out those different options—the different means of redress that would be available to anyone who had received a report of a finding of fact that there had been an adverse treatment of them by the NHS. To spell it out, those different means of redress could be the NHS Litigation Authority; a dispute resolution service; the right to go to court, which they retain; or a redress scheme as defined in the Bill. In proposing the new clause, I make it absolutely clear that although we have reservations—indeed, we disagree—about the extent to which the Government propose in the Bill that the NHS Litigation Authority be involved in the scheme, we do not suggest that it should not be. There is a role for it to play, as there is for a resolve-type scheme for someone, once they have had that finding of fact. So the new clause sets out the beginning of the argument that we shall make for the rest of this afternoon. I beg to move.