NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 67:"Page 6, line 35, at end insert ““which should be directed to the appropriate complaints authority””" The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 68. Amendment No. 67 has been tabled because we are troubled by the line,"““complaints which need not be considered””." If a patient makes a complaint and wants to make a claim under the redress scheme and that complaint is not considered but is rejected, where does that patient go? My understanding is that if they are not satisfied, they can make a complaint which can be considered eventually by the Healthcare Commission, but I think that if they make a complaint to the scheme at that stage, they should be advised where to go next, because the average person will not have a clue. I accept, and I know to my cost, that there are many people who make complaints their life’s work. They make a profession out of it. As a Member of Parliament I dealt with a number of people, who I was delighted to pass on to my successor, who obviously felt that their complaint would drive them to the end of their days and that they would take it to any lengths. Nevertheless, if a complaint is turned down by the scheme, that patient should be referred somewhere, even if it is to their MP—but I would not like my colleagues in the other place to hear me say that. The NHS does not have a good record on complaints, as my noble friend Lady Neuberger said—and, indeed, we will discuss that tomorrow. To leave patients in the air, having been turned down by the redress scheme, is very wrong and we really must make some provision for where they are going to go and to whom they will be referred. I do not think that we can be confident in this scheme unless we feel patients will have that advice, having been turned down. As to Amendment No. 68, we are concerned—as is the British Medical Association—that if claimants disagree with the decision made under the redress scheme they have two options: either to accept whatever the redress scheme comes up with or to reject it. If they reject it their only course then is to take very expensive legal action. Such legal action is not only expensive for the patient but for the National Health Service as well, in money and in clinician’s time. We believe that there should be an appeals mechanism at the end of the redress scheme process so that a claimant who is not successful can appeal. Again, that mechanism would have to be independent of the NHS. It would be no good for patients to go all the way through the redress scheme and then have to make an appeal to the same trust that turned down their claim under that scheme. So the appeal would have to be to an independent person. I hope the Minister will consider establishing an appeal system. That would show claimants that the Government want to be—I use the term again—absolutely clear and, more importantly, absolutely fair. I beg to move.