NHS Redress Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I am sure that he, like me, has had constituents coming to him to talk about a relative—a husband or wife perhaps—who had died in hospital, and about the fact that they knew that things had gone wrong. Such events may or may not give rise to a claim for clinical negligence. We are of course dealing in the Bill with something that concerns an issue in tort—an injury resulting from that, which can be claimed for through a court. Such people have often said to me—and, I am sure, to my hon. Friend—that they are looking for a recognition of the truth of what happened and a reassurance that it will not happen again. People would often take tremendous comfort from knowing that an event would not happen again—but I am afraid that people are not confident about that. I know from personal experience that the patient advice and liaison services in the hospitals in my constituency—I have two large hospitals there—go to enormous lengths to try to establish the facts of what happened. I have been very impressed on many occasions by the detail that the service has gone into. However, that does not mean that my constituents are satisfied about the independence and veracity of what is said. A degree of independence is required. The Secretary of State talked about independent medical experts, but patients are looking for an investigation into a matter that is serious and has resulted in their injury, and about which they might otherwise go to court. They want that independence of investigation, because it gives them the confidence to be able to reach a settlement or to accept an explanation, an apology and some redress from the NHS, without feeling that they have to have their day in court. We are not trying to establish an alternative courts procedure through the system, but if it is independent, members of the public may certainly be able to treat the process as if it were their day in court. They will have the facts examined, they will know what happened and they can insist on the lessons being learned. That point comes home. To an extent, we have been talking about complaints in general. The Bill is about a distinct subset of complaints that give rise to this kind of claim. However, across the complaints procedure we can see how often members of the public and patients want an independent investigation. That has happened in so far as they have been given the opportunity to go to the Healthcare Commission. Previously, people had community health councils, which often supported complainants. The Government took that away from them. [Interruption.] There is an independent complaints service. Many members of the public go to the Healthcare Commission, not least because they want the independence of the commission’s investigation. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) just asked about time limits. She is right. There is sometimes a case for considering how long it is taking to examine complaints. I applaud much of the Healthcare Commission’s work, but it has had to set limits on the time that it will take to examine complaints. I am a bit disappointed because in letters I have had from the Healthcare Commission, it is perfectly clear that those time limits do not apply to the existing backlog of cases. There will be some cases that are taking a long time and there will be no certainty about how long it will take to resolve them. That gives an indication of the volume of activity that we are dealing with and how important it is to members of the public that cases do not go on for months. Sometimes it takes more than a year to resolve a case.