My Lords, the duty of candour means honesty and straightforwardness. We desperately need an open, honest, transparent and compassionate health service, and I hope that Amendments 140 and 152 will help to achieve that.
Something has gone desperately wrong with the care in some hospitals and care homes. We now live in a litigious society, and I feel that that has been increased by cover-ups when something has gone wrong and gagging people who try to speak out. People will go to any lengths to find out what happened to their loved ones if they are not told and given an apology. Good medical personnel will explain and apologise if something adverse happens. So often, that is all that is needed.
Patients know that there are risks, if they are explained when they sign a consent form. When they go wrong, lessons should be learnt so that they do not happen again. That is one of the reasons why openness is so important. Have lessons been learnt after the horrific situation of the Mid Staffordshire hospital? Recently I heard of a former police superintendent who had had a brain injury due to an accident, and was a patient in a well known central London hospital. When his wife and young son went to visit him, they smelt him before they saw him. They found him facing the wall in bed, unable to move and lying in soiled sheets and wearing a filthy gown. His wife was so upset that she told a nurse, who just said that they were overworked. The next time the wife visited she found him sitting alone,
facing a curtain, looking miserable and wearing a pad that had not been changed. She said to her children, “We are taking Daddy home”, and smuggled him out of the hospital.
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Where was the compassion? How many such cases are there throughout the country? I refer to the Francis report, which calls for a common culture to be shared throughout the system. These three characteristics are required: openness, enabling concerns to be raised and disclosed freely, without fear, and questions to be answered; transparency, allowing true information about performance and outcomes to be shared with staff, patients and the public; and candour, ensuring that patients harmed by a healthcare service are informed of the fact and an appropriate remedy is offered, whether or not a complaint has been made or a question asked about it. That requires all organisations and those working in them to be honest, open and truthful in all their dealings with patients and the public.
I am pleased that progress has been made since I moved a similar amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill. It is about time that the recommendations of the Francis report were put into operation.