My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl for introducing these important regulations, which the Opposition are very happy to support. It is clearly unacceptable for anyone or any organisation in the NHS to knowingly publish false or misleading information. We are fully behind the Government on this. The noble Earl will probably remember that during the passage of the Care Act we tried to strengthen the clause that the regulations emanate from by tabling an amendment which would have made it an offence to withhold information with the intention to mislead or misdirect. That was not accepted by the Government.
I come back to the point that the Minister ended with. He emphasised that this applies only to NHS trusts, foundation trusts and those providing services. He will know from our discussions on the Bill that we wanted to expand this to cover other organisations,
including local authorities and clinical commissioning groups. I would be grateful if he could respond on why the Government still think this should be confined to those who provide services.
I put to him that the Francis report into Mid Staffordshire, and indeed the more recent report by Bill Kirkup looking at the very worrying incidents that happened in Morecambe Bay, do not just put responsibility for what happened at the door of the providers, though I fully accept that in the end the board of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and the board of the trust that ran Morecambe Bay must take primary responsibility. However, a number of other organisations were listed—organisations that would not be defined as providers. There are circumstances in which clinical commissioning groups, or part of NHS England, ought to be covered by the same rules and law because one depends on honesty and openness throughout the system. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that.
This is part of wishing to develop a culture of openness and transparency. People in the health service are very cynical about these proposals because they do not see the same transparency and openness and, to be frank, honesty emanating from the Minister’s own department. If my noble friend Lord Brooke were here, he would remind the Minister about the lack of publication of the interim risk register. I point to the report by the noble Lord, Lord Rose, on management capacity. It is one thing to have a legal provision, but it is another to ensure that everyone in the system actually operates according to the spirit of what the Government intend. I myself believe that that should apply as much to the Minister’s department and NHS England as it does to the providers in the health service.