Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I did not expect to be attacked by my own side for my former profession. I agree that we all need to accept that when we make mistakes we should own up to them, and that goes for politicians, too. In fairness, I should speak to the amendments. Surely the point is that there should be a statutory duty of candour in the health service, and that is what is missing. If it needs any encouragement, I know of three separate reports that deal with it: the Levinson and Gallagher report, ““Disclosing Harmful Medical Errors to Patients””; the Robins report in the Law Society Gazette; and ““Why do patients complain?””, from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. All three reports, and reports from across the world—there is good evidence in Australia and New Zealand—show that where there is openness and admission of blame, the amount of litigation subsequently goes down, rather than up. For nine out of every 10 clients I saw as a professional barrister practising on clinical negligence, the first two questions they asked were: ““Why did they not apologise?””; and ““What will be done to ensure that it does not happen to anyone else?”” Nine out of 10 clients would fully understand that no doctor gets up in the morning and makes a mistake deliberately. They understand that it is because they are making clinical errors under intense pressure. In that respect, those are the things that need to be addressed by the Health Secretary, rather than in the Bill.