Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-05
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, as others have spoken fully to other amendments in this group, I will confine my remarks to Motion L1 in my name. I thank the Minister for the open-door policy that he has had and for his willingness on many occasions to discuss with me the problems for parents who can feel completely overwhelmed in the face of not being listened to by clinicians. I am also particularly grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Masham and Lady Stowell, for their helpful comments and advice behind the scenes, and to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who has shared with me his extensive experience on mediation In drafting my amendment to the amendment, I was particularly concerned that we must take evidence directly from parents, including parents whose dispute has not necessarily progressed to court. While it is quite extreme to progress as far as court, there seem to be a lot of parents who have felt completely overwhelmed in the face of personal tragedy. In an interview, Rob Behrens, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, said about mediation: "We’ve got to get better at communicating with complainants, better at learning from bad experiences, and better at using early resolution and mediation so that sometimes we don’t have to use adjudication at all." He went on to point out some of the cultural characteristics of the health service that make these encounters hard. He listed professional dominance, clinical hegemony, hierarchy and defensiveness as characteristics that make it particularly difficult I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for flagging up parent carers. They often feel deeply disempowered because they are completely dependent on the help of others to manage a very difficult situation and so particularly inhibited in the face of any professional dominance; of course, there have been some stories in the press. In response to the Minister, I will gladly be involved in developing the scope of this review. I hope that he will rapidly put me in contact with the official who will be responsible for it because we need to start as soon as possible. The government amendment stipulates a year—actually a very short time to run an inquiry—so it needs to happen quickly. I hope that there will be funding resources attached to this; it cannot be done on thin air or a shoestring. I hope also that there will be support for it to be done properly so that we can take evidence. Developing the scope of the review will be very important and I think there are parent groups who would particularly wish to be consulted at that early stage as well In the letter that we were sent, I note that the Government said: "Should the review make recommendations for legislative change, and the Government agrees with those recommendations, we would seek to bring forward legislation where parliamentary time allows." I see that the Government have left themselves a small out, but, if this is to be a properly conducted review with clear recommendations, I hope that they will listen to that evidence and will not shirk at taking whatever steps are necessary I conclude simply by thanking the Minister, the Bill team and the other officials who have engaged in many hours of discussion on this issue. I look forward to working with speed on getting this review up and running.