NHS Redress Bill [Lords]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) for the constructive way in which has engaged with me and the Department on the Bill. I thank him for facilitating the meeting that we held with AvMA between the conclusion of the Committee and today’s proceedings. To complete the tribute to him, I should compliment him on his parliamentary drafting skills, which are clearly excellent. As I understand it, the new clause imposes a general duty to promote resolution under the scheme. Under the new clause, a duty will be imposed on scheme members and the scheme authority to have regard, when carrying out their functions under the scheme, to the desirability of settling the case. Scheme members and the scheme authority should have particular regard to the desirability of settling under the scheme, rather than leaving cases to be pursued through the courts. I welcome the new clause and the approach that my hon. Friend seeks to achieve through it. He is right to say that it should be seen in the context of the Government amendments. I should say to hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley), that we have listened between the Committee stage and the Report stage. We have taken on board comments made by hon. Members on both sides of the House and we believe that the Bill will be strengthened through making those amendments. In my view, the new clause re-enforces the positive front-foot spirit that we want the Bill to encourage. The Bill and the redress scheme to be established under the powers in the Bill aim to open up access to justice for the less articulate, the less wealthy and those who traditionally would have been fed up and abandoned the legal process before a case was completed. Under the new clause, if providers of NHS services believe that there might be a case of negligence, they would be expected to take cases forward. An active approach to redress will be required under the scheme. To be effective, it is important that the NHS is not defensive. The NHS must do all that it can to identify and, where appropriate, resolve cases falling under the scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington was absolutely right to say that the spirit of the Bill is about empowering patients, providing information to them and ensuring that we address their needs when harm has been done. I urge him to see the Bill in the context of other reforms that the Government are making in the national health service to ensure that it is a service that focuses on the individual patient and that patient’s experience of the health service, and on ensuring that, when things go wrong, redress to the patient is the thing that matters. I am confident that the NHS redress scheme has the potential over time to effect culture change in the NHS, although I readily acknowledge that that is never an easy thing to achieve. There will be scheme members who are already taking an active approach to complaints and to clinical negligence cases. Some organisations will be prepared to be open and honest, and will embrace the principles of the redress scheme, but there will be others who may continue to be defensive, drag their heels and have a less than positive approach to these matters. We need to do all that we can to ensure that that does not happen.