NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 20:"Page 3, line 14, at end insert ““provided that any individual who meets the requirement of a scheme to commence proceedings shall have the right to bring such proceedings””" The noble Baroness said: In some ways, the amendment goes right back to one of the opening statements made by the Minister—in his opening speech this afternoon and his opening speech on Second Reading. He talked about putting the patient at the heart of the process; and yet, with the scheme as it stands, that is not the case. The scheme permits the Secretary of State or the scheme authority, whoever it may be, to have the right to determine who can seek redress under the scheme. If one puts oneself in the position of being a patient faced with an array of different possibilities and options to raise issues with the NHS, such as ICAS, PALS, the complaints procedures of the different trusts, and one of those options was the NHS redress scheme, but that came with a heavy health warning on it that it was not open to the patient individually to initiate, that might set patients fears a-running. It difficult to see, given the rest of the thrust of the Bill—that it should make the NHS more patient-friendly in dealing with these difficult issues and should promote a culture, which is not only a learning culture but in a way a culture of inclusion of patients—why this option is not open to patients and why patients do not have the power to trigger the scheme. I should like to question the Minister closely about why that power is missing from the Bill. I beg to move.