Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, Amendment 57A is to do with reporting complaints to the NHS Commissioning Board. There are two distinct areas for complaints: complaints related to commissioning and those related to care or service delivery. In fact, they would filter through the board, clinical commissioning groups and local authorities. I include local authorities because, if we are talking about complaints about possible integrated services, we cannot decouple clinical commissioning groups from local authorities. In the far-off days that have been mentioned earlier in this Committee, before PCTs and foundation trusts were even thought of, most NHS boards had a complaints convener. I was one such person. We had a quarterly report back to the board. We reported back on complaints, but it is also worth putting on record and remembering that not only did trusts receive complaints but they received a lot of plaudits as well. You only have to wander around a hospital—I spent six months in my DGH as a visitor at the tail-end of last year—to see the number of cards of thanks sent in by relatives or by patients. Plaudits should get a mention, and we have far more plaudits than complaints in the NHS. Complaints, however, are important and should be reported back. In those days, they were reported back quarterly to the board, as they perform a useful function: they are a barometer of the institution. You can see what is working and what is not and where there are issues. They go up and down. They can form part of the performance dashboard and they are also critical for learning. An institution or trust can learn from complaints. Handling complaints is a delicate—and should also be a transparent—process. The NHS Commissioning Board is committed to transparency. Its role is overseeing service provision and so it should see a breakdown of the complaints that are arising within the service it oversees—not personal details of Mrs Gidden’s hip replacement or Mr Patel’s hernia, but an appropriate format that will reflect the health of the NHS. As the board also oversees commissioning, it should also see complaints that relate to an organisation’s competence in commissioning. So, with that as the framework of my complaint, I wonder whether the Minister could clarify the nature of reporting such information to the NHS Commissioning Board. I am sure he will be happy to agree to its importance. I beg to move.