Gosport Independent Panel: Publication of Report — House of Commons, 2018-06-20
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the shadow Health Secretary for the considered tone of his comments. I agree with everything he says. Members across the House will understand that we are all constrained in what we can say about the individual doctor concerned—because that is now a matter for the police and the CPS to take forward—but we are not constrained in debating what system lessons can be learned, and we should debate them fully, not just today but in the future. The big question for us is not so much, "How could this have happened once?"—because in a huge healthcare system we are, unfortunately, always occasionally going to get things that go wrong, however horrific that sometimes is—but, "How could it have been allowed to go on for so long without being stopped?" Reflecting the hon. Gentleman’s comments, the poor treatment of whistleblowers, the ignoring of families and the closing of ranks is wrong, and we must stop it. We must go further than we have gone to date. In a way, though, it is straightforward, because we know exactly what the problem is and we just have to make sure that the culture changes. The more difficult bit is where there were process issues that happened in good faith but had a terrible outcome In particular, this report is a salutary lesson about the importance of transparency. Obviously I had only a couple of hours to read it—so not very long—but it looks as though the Baker report was left to gather dust for 10 years, for the perfectly straightforward and understandable reason that people said that it could not be published in the course of a police investigation or while an inquest was going on. I am speculating here, but I am pretty certain that had it been published, transparency would have prompted much more rapid action, and some of the things that we may now decide to do we would have done much, much earlier. That is an incredibly powerful argument for the transparency that has sadly been lacking How confident can I be that this would not happen again? I do think that the culture is changing in the NHS, that the NHS is more transparent and more open, and that interactions with families are much better than they were. However, I do not, by any means, think that we are there yet. I think that we will uncover from this a number of things that we are still not getting right As the hon. Gentleman will understand, it is not a decision for the Government as to which police force conducts these investigations. We have separation of powers and that has to be a matter for the police. One of the things that we have to ask about police investigations is whether forces have access to the expertise they need to decide whether they should prioritise an investigation. When the medical establishment closes ranks, it can be difficult for the police to know whether they should challenge that, and it does appear that that happened in this case In terms of wider lessons on the oversight of medicines and the Health Service Safety Investigations Bill, we will certainly take on board whether any changes need to be made there.