Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will go back to my script; he may be interested to hear this part because it deals with the point that he rightly makes. If there were a duty on responsible bodies such as health authorities immediately to come clean with evidence, there would probably have been no need for these amendments because we would not be in the position that we are in. Side by side, on a parallel basis, we need to ensure that all health authorities, and any public bodies, are responsible in their dealings with the public; that goes without saying. There are about 1 million adverse occurrences or accidents in the NHS every year, and about 10,000 lead to action being taken against the NHS. It is, therefore, a big area of law. In the earlier debate, the point was made that 66% of immigration appeals succeed because the initial decision was bad. In this instance, there would be far fewer long, drawn-out cases if all health authorities and public bodies were under a duty to disclose fully and urgently, and there would not be the astronomical costs that some of these cases result in.