NHS Redress Bill [Lords]

I am passionately on the side of those who want complete independence in the process. The Government have a short memory. The old NHS complaints procedure was not independent, in that the complaints convenor was time and again an employee of the trust or very often a non-executive director of the trust. That happened in my area. Only a minuscule number of complaints got through that trust employee. The Government then changed the NHS complaints procedure. Certainly, the first stage is the internal investigation, but then it moves on to the wider, completely independent part supervised by the Healthcare Commission. I will give an example from personal memory. Rather a long time ago, I was a doctor doing my national service in the RAF. I had just got married. Within weeks of that, I was posted unaccompanied to Christmas Island. My commanding officer, who was the same sort of lovely, helpful, avuncular figure as Mr. Speaker himself, told me that an officer had the right to appeal to the Secretary of State for Air. So I came up to London in my best uniform to appeal to him, but who did I see? It was merely the lowly squadron leader who had given me the posting.