NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 4:"Page 1, line 21, after ““illness,”” insert ““advice given to any patient””" The noble Earl said: Again, this is a straightforward amendment designed to ask the Minister why subsection (4)(a) is not wider in its scope, by referring explicitly to advice given to patients. It spells out that the types of breach of duty of care that may give rise to a qualifying liability in tort are those,"““owed to any person in connection with the diagnosis of illness or the care and treatment of any patient””," and in consequence of any act or omission by a healthcare professional. The question really is whether ““care and treatment”” includes advice. If it does, then I have to say that that fact is certainly not self-evident; and because it is not self-evident, there could be a case for making the position absolutely clear in the Bill. If a health professional, without doing any more than this, advises a patient to take, or not to take, a certain course of action—let us say it is to advise a patient to take exercise when that is not appropriate, and the patient thereby suffers a heart attack—is the advice that was given necessarily and by definition part of the patient’s care and treatment? If an agency nurse arrives on a ward and tells a patient who has been sitting beside the bed of another patient with MRSA that he need not bother to wash his hands before getting back into bed, and the patient subsequently develops MRSA, was that advice part of the patient’s care and treatment? Other noble Lords may be able to think of different examples, but the point is, I hope, clear. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister why the subsection is not worded so as to include advice explicitly. I beg to move.