Gosport Independent Panel: Publication of Report — House of Lords, 2018-06-20
Topic: Health
James O’Shaughnessy (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheeler and Lady Jolly, for their very perceptive questions—as ever. First, I extend my personal sympathies to the families and to join my right honourable friend in expressing our apologies on behalf of the Government and the NHS for what has happened to them and their relatives. Like the noble Baronesses have done, I pay tribute to those families and all the others who have fought so tirelessly in seeking justice. As has been acknowledged, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bishop Jones and his panel The story told in this report is of a litany of failure across many institutions, which often had very closed cultures. Unfortunately, those piled on to one another across many different agencies of government, which is what created that highly unacceptable cover-up for so long. It is about getting to the bottom of that culture. Let us face it: unfortunately these circumstances are not unique. We come across this in different parts of our society all the time, and we need to get to the heart of that closed culture to lead to a culture of accountability and transparency The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, asked some specific questions, including about the 200 additional patients without notes. Clearly, further investigation is warranted because we need to substantiate that claim. It is obviously one of the work streams that will be going forward. She asked about streamlining professional regulation, given the obvious inadequacies of the GMC and NMC regulators during this process. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said, every part of government needs to look to itself with great honesty about what we need to do to put in place the right environment to prevent this happening again. I think we all agree on the need to move forward to streamline professional regulation. It is not something we have yet been able to do, but the tragic news we have been discussing today gives that fresh impetus. It is clearly something we will be looking at Patient safety is a great passion of the Secretary of State. There were changes in the oversight of medicines, particularly opioids, after the Shipman inquiry. The noble Baroness raised some good questions about whether there is a need for an independent body, or whether in the Health Safety Investigation Branch we have that body but its remit needs to be reconsidered as part of the Bill going through. I am sure that we will be doing that The noble Baronesses, Lady Wheeler and Lady Jolly, asked about the issues around inquiries. One of the things that has been exposed here is that there were overlapping inquiries that were impeding each other or preventing one another moving forward. Making sure that there is a clear process for how that ought to take place when someone—a family member, a staff member, the police—has raised a concern is something we have to get to the bottom of because that bureaucratic muddle was clearly at the heart of the delay and, because of the delay, more people died unnecessarily. It is not just a case of clearing things up and making them neater; it has a massive impact on harm The learning from deaths programme is a big step forward. It has been taken into many bits of the health service already. It is now moving into the primary care area. Trusts are already obliged to publish deaths that ought to be in the scope of mortality reviews. From next April, all non-coronial deaths will be subject to investigation by medical examiners. That is yet another part of the patient safety environment that we need to put together Going beyond that, there are clearly some very challenging questions that the criminal justice authorities, coroners, the Home Office, the Department of Health and Social Care and all parts of government need to ask themselves to see whether they are really doing everything they need to do to provide a safety net to make sure that when things go wrong we find out about them quickly, we stop them and we learn from them. In the next few months, as we move towards publishing a plan for what we should do next, it is imperative that all Members of this House and the other place, who have great contributions to make in this area, feel free to engage with this process and make their recommendations to it, so that when we report we have done as thorough and comprehensive a job as we possibly can so that we can prevent these tragedies happening again in future.