Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, with all his experience—albeit, like me, as a non-lawyer—is speaking exactly the truth. In many of those cases, the legal advice would be, ““Say nothing””. There therefore needs to be a statutory duty, because then the responsibility of the lawyers concerned would be to advise, ““There is no option but to tell the patients or their families””. An interesting point is that insurers in the United States often require open disclosure policies and practice by health providers to qualify for insurance. The international evidence is that, as well as being the right thing to do morally and ethically, being open and honest when things go wrong can actually reduce litigation and complaints. My concern is that the Government will say that they are doing enough by saying that the duty of candour can be achieved through a contractual process. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has pointed out, this would apply only to hospitals with an NHS contract; it would not apply to GPs, dentists, pharmacists or private healthcare providers. I do not see why the duty of candour to patients and their families should be regarded as of lesser importance and impact than those things where there is direct regulation. I hope that the Minister will say that the Department of Health will take this away and that he will come back to the House with proposals to give a statutory duty of candour to protect the interests of patients.