NHS Redress Bill [Lords]

Erdington and Edgbaston. There is a confusing number of Birmingham constituencies beginning with ““E””. Both my hon. Friends raised that point. It is intended that each stage of the scheme will be governed by time limits to ensure consistency and appropriate speed in the handling of cases. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) has asked a fair question, and I can tell him that the time limits will be set out in secondary legislation after full consultation with stakeholders. We want to ensure that the limits are practical and effective, and that they do their job without placing on the service undue burdens to provide information. We accept the principle that there should be time limits, because we want the system to deliver the speediest possible redress while ensuring that a full inquiry takes place. My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston and for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) both drew our attention to that issue. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire also questioned us on the issue of tort, and asked why we had moved away from the recommendations in the ““Making Amends”” report. When developing the redress policy, officials had a series of meetings with stakeholders to discuss the practicality and desirability of an alternative to the existing legal test of liability. Among the alternative tests examined was one based more on determining whether harm caused to a patient could or should have been avoided, rather than on making reference to an act or omission of an individual clinician. However, it became clear that changing the whole basis of clinical negligence law was likely to be extremely difficult and time consuming. The Department reached the conclusion that, given that many of the problems in the present system relate to its adversarial nature, to the time that it takes and to the high administrative and legal costs involved, reform of the test itself was neither desirable nor necessary. So we have concentrated on delivering what we believe will be a better system to provide better redress for the cases that meet the existing legal test for liability.