My Lords, the Bill will confer a power to amend or supplement the law relating to human medicines, veterinary medicines and medical devices. I respectfully submit that a power to create a system to protect the public in relation to all three, but particularly two of them, is well within the scope of the Bill.
When I first read the report of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, I was extremely upset by what it disclosed. When the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, followed me last time, he said that doing so was a privilege. I want to say that following him is a tremendous privilege because he knows much more about the internal structures of the health service and its related services than I do.
I was privileged to represent the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland for a good number of years before I joined the public service. The work was concerned primarily with mistakes of one kind or another that doctors or dentists had been involved in, but the need for safety was absolutely clear in most of the cases I was involved in. The first time I ever came to the House of Lords was on the instruction of the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland, but of course, that was long ago. The case concerned the safety of a patient.
The message that cries out from the report of the committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege is that people are suffering considerable harm as a result of treatments given in the health service, but they have no one to turn to. There is no direct public voice for patients to come to and discuss the matter. It is essential to have someone to whom patients can bring their concerns, which may not always be complaints. It may start as something much less than a complaint—a concern that becomes a complaint if not attended to in any way.
It is essential that somebody with authority and complete independence of the health service be put in place now who is able to listen to what any patient may want to say in connection with the treatment he or she has received. There is a huge deficiency, as has been
exposed clearly by the examples given in the report. Therefore, there is an urgent need for Her Majesty’s Government to deal with that immediately. It is all very well to say that it is not this or that, but the truth is that this is urgent, because people are suffering and have suffered from the absence of anybody to whom they can turn in situations such as those described in the report. The Government would be heavily at fault if treatments and difficulties of this kind emerged in the future without them having done anything about it.
The setting up of a patient safety commissioner seems to require in the first instance the appointment of a completely independent person who would be a voice for patients, with a knowledge of the service but independent of it. He or she could bring a patient’s question or trouble to the attention of the part of the service that was intimately concerned with it and do something about it. The report makes it clear that the full powers that a patient safety commissioner should have is a matter for detailed work by a taskforce, but in the meantime statutory authority should be given to an independent person to listen to those suffering in some way from a difficulty in relation to the health service so that it can be brought to people who understand the nature of the subject. The independent person could bring it to the appropriate authority. It is a serious matter that should be dealt with straightaway.
I am very impressed by the example of the Children’s Commissioner, which has been referred to. In the recent discussion about whether to keep schools open, the Children’s Commissioner could not be said to be an organ of the Government, of the trade unions, or particularly of children; she stood independently in a relationship that considered all three parties. That gave her tremendous authority in a very difficult situation, which remains difficult. She was able as an independent person authoritatively to say that children should come back to school. Of course, it was necessary to take effective steps to protect them, but I believe that she was influential in bringing that about. In Scotland also, that has been an important area in delivering people from the stringency of the lockdowns.
So that is a very good illustration of what an independent person can do. I strongly hope that the Government will put forward an amendment to deal with this matter in the simplest possible terms at present, but with the possibility of enlargement as time goes on. Indeed, I suggested some time ago to the Department of Health that it would be useful for it to consider an amendment that would give effect to the report—but I gather that nothing has happened in that direction so far. So we might have to think about amendments to try to deal with some of those matters, as well as the present one. But I strongly support the essence of the present amendment, and I strongly support it happening now.