NHS Redress Bill [HL]

We have just spoken about PALS and ICAS. The key here is that any form of assistance provided to a patient in pursuit of a claim under the redress scheme needs to be of a kind that he will regard as independent and unbiased. As I said a minute ago, I do not think that PALS falls into that category because its staff, although they may be perfectly well-intentioned, good people, are employees of the hospital. One further idea running alongside ICAS is that of the McKenzie Friend. A McKenzie Friend supports a person who finds himself as a defendant or in some sense on the defensive in a court of law. Usually the McKenzie Friend charges no fee, only expenses, and sometimes not even those. His role is to sit by the shoulder of the person concerned and to be there for him as an ally and guide to what is often a bewildering procedure. The McKenzie Friend typically has a good background knowledge of the law—often, in my experience, equal or superior to the knowledge possessed by the average solicitor. Is there any scope for a McKenzie Friend-type of person to assist claimants in the context of the NHS redress scheme? We need to think of the scheme from the point of view of the patient. I have in mind the little old lady who wants to make a claim but is bewildered by the system and the business of form-filling. She needs to have the process explained to her clearly and kindly by someone who is not part of the system and is unambiguously on her side. I do not know whether the Minister or her team have given any thought to this idea, but it would interest me to know whether she thought it was a concept that could be usefully developed.