NHS Redress Bill [HL]

I very much agree with everything the noble Baroness has said, and I would like to add only a few comments on the other amendments in the group. One of the yardsticks of a successful scheme will be the extent to which it succeeds in demonstrating transparency. That is as much true of the Government’s proposals as it is of the alternative model which we prefer, and which I outlined earlier under Amendment No. 1. The person who has made the application to the redress scheme will want to be able to see that during the course of the investigation full consideration has been given to what he believes to be the appropriate issues. His legal advisers will not be in a position to assess the accuracy of a finding of fact or, under the Government’s version, the appropriateness of an offer made, without access to documentation including the medical report and any reports on the evidence used to support or rebut the claim. So the first question to the Minister is about disclosure; to what extent disclosure will be a feature of the scheme, whether it is requested or not; and will there be any particular types of documentation that will be deemed privileged and will therefore not be disclosed to the patient or his advisers? The second aspect of this amendment is covered more explicitly in Amendment No. 54. As we have discussed already, one of the key aims of any successful redress scheme has to be the absorption of lessons learnt by those who were responsible for whatever went wrong in a particular case, but the process of lessons learnt should not stop there. There may well be lessons and messages that are of relevance in the wider NHS. The NPSA is the body charged with collating and drawing lessons from adverse incidents in the NHS, and I should like to hear from the Minister how proceedings under the redress scheme will be linked into the work of that agency to ensure that the NPSA has before it the relevant factual details of an investigation and the scheme authority’s recommendations about lessons to be learnt where there is a finding of error. I hope that the Minister can shed some light on those issues.