NHS Redress Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for his encouraging reply in relation to Amendment No. 9. I am also grateful for the powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, on the whole issue of apologies and the need for them. I hope it is in order for me to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has asked me to report that she is very much in favour of this concept. I fully take on board, as I always do, the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg. He is right that an apology is not always relevant in all situations. But sometimes it is. I certainly took care in Amendment No. 9 to make clear that it is only where an apology is appropriate that it should feature. To be technical for a moment, picking up another point that the noble Lord made, to my mind an apology does not mean that somebody has been at fault in the legal sense: errors can occur which give rise to an apology. Those errors need not, however, be negligent errors. They could easily be non-negligent errors but nevertheless deserving of an apology. I was interested in what the Minister said about Amendment No. 33 and in his pointing out that Clause 10(2)(h) was intended to cater for the lessons-learnt point. But the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has raised a key point, which is that when patients receive an explanation and where appropriate an apology, they need to have a clear sense of the lessons learnt. So while it is important for the hospital trust to have a clear sense of the lessons learnt and maybe for the National Patient Safety Agency to be involved, there is another person in this equation and that is the patient. We must all the time come back to the patient, because this is a scheme above all where the patient’s interests have to be safeguarded and borne in mind. I hope that we can pursue that particular aspect of this question at a later stage of the Bill. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. [Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 10 not moved.]