NHS Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am sorry. I got tangled up in my amendment numbers. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for coming to my rescue. I apologise. I did have some more things to say. I am happy to delight the House with further and better particulars. The noble Baroness mentioned Amendment No. 38, which I had not thought to pre-empt until she had spoken to it. The amendment provides for the annual report to be submitted to the Healthcare Commission. It also provides that copies of the report will be made available to all who have sought redress during the period covered by the report. We suggest that this level of detail is not appropriate to be set out on the face of the Bill. Government Amendment No. 36 provides for the report to be published. It is clear that this information will be available to the public, including the Healthcare Commission and patients whose cases have been considered under the scheme. It is not for the Bill to seek to determine how best to assist the Healthcare Commission in its operations. It is appropriate for the Healthcare Commission itself to determine the types of information that it requires and subsequently to make it clear that it requires that information. That is the way it behaves in all sorts of other areas—it requests information to enable it to discharge its duties and responsibilities. With regard to the proposal that copies of the report be made available to each individual who has sought redress under the scheme, that is already provided for in the requirement that the report will be published and therefore will be available to the public. The method by which each scheme member publishes its report is a matter for local discretion subject to good practice guidance rather than primary legislation. We envisage, however, that guidance may advise that reports be available to all patients within a scheme member’s locality to demonstrate that lessons are being learnt from the redress scheme and that the scheme is being used effectively to improve local delivery of services. We also do not support Amendment No. 12, which I should have spoken to earlier. This amendment is inappropriate as it would commit scheme members to providing such a report on all cases falling under the scheme. However, there will be cases where an error truly is a mistake arising from circumstances that are unlikely to occur again. In other cases, it may not be possible to identify an immediate cause or an obvious solution to prevent a similar error from occurring. In those cases, an explanation and an apology will already be offered and a report on action to be taken to reduce the risk of the error being repeated would be inappropriate and meaningless. At worst, it could exacerbate an already emotive situation. However, I accept that patients harmed during their healthcare often wish to be reassured that similar incidents are unlikely to occur again. That is why we propose Amendment No. 36, which amends Clause 10 to require scheme members to publish an annual report. Those are my reasons for not accepting the non-government amendments.