NHS Redress Bill [Lords]

This group of cross-party amendments reflects our concern that the NHS redress scheme, as envisaged in the Bill, lacks independence. This represents a missed opportunity to create a mechanism that will have the full confidence of patients and therefore provide a meaningful alternative to going to court. This is the key dividing line between the Government and the Opposition. I speak also for the Liberal Democrats and for the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) when I say that we believe that the fact-finding stage of the investigation must be independent. The Government do not agree. The Minister explicitly conceded that in stark terms in Committee, when he said that the scheme ““is not independent””. In other words, the investigation will be conducted internally by the NHS. The very trust being investigated will be investigating itself. We believe that to be fundamentally wrong for a number of reasons. The first relates to the principle of natural justice. The NHS should not be its own judge and jury, as that represents a clear conflict of interest. Independence is a basic principle of natural justice enshrined in the rule against bias that no man, or woman, should be a judge in his or her own cause. We have consulted widely on this issue, and there is widespread concern outside this place about the lack of independence in the Bill. There is also an issue of credibility. Independence is a pragmatic necessity, in the sense that an investigation without the badge of independence would lack credibility and fail to inspire the confidence of patients. That point was acknowledged by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, in its report ““Compensation Culture: NHS Redress Bill””, published on 1 March 2006.