Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, this returns us to a debate that we had in Committee on the future of the National Patient Safety Agency. I am a former chair of the National Patient Safety Agency, which was established following work by the former Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson, looking at the experience of the airline industry, which over the years has developed a very effective system of learning from mistakes. In the airline industry, airline pilots have the confidence to report near misses and other incidents because that is done on the basis of no recriminations. The evidence from those reports is put together to help the airline industry to become safer and it has been outstandingly successful over the years. That was the intention of the National Patient Safety Agency. It undertakes many roles but the core role is the national reporting and learning system which is aimed at carrying out the same process as in the airline industry. I understand that, as the years go by, more and more incident reports are made by staff in the National Health Service from which patterns are learnt. The NPSA then issues various bulletins and safety warnings so that the health service learns from mistakes. With the abolition of the NPSA, what will happen to the national reporting and learning system? No doubt the noble Earl will be able to inform us of where they have got to. I understood that last year there were discussions about a transfer of operational management to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. The point is that it comes under the auspices of the NHS Commissioning Board. The issue here is whether that is sensible, given that the NHS Commissioning Board is a management body overseeing the National Health Service, where, in this system, you want to encourage staff to feel that they can report untoward incidents without any fear of repercussions. I would like to hear from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, how we will be assured of the independence of the process by which the reporting system and analysis are undertaken, and whether he considers that there might be ways in which it could be taken out of the umbrella of the NHS Commissioning Board. I, for one, would have thought that it might have a chilling effect on the willingness of NHS staff to report incidents in the future. I beg to move.