I thank all those noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I am extremely grateful to them. I have listened to what the Minister had to say, and I do not deny that meetings are taking place—I understand that they are—but I have no idea what is coming out of those meetings. But we will come to that in a minute.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is quite right that actually implementing policy is the most critical thing and is extremely difficult. The Paterson report was a very interesting report on things that had gone terribly wrong with an individual surgeon who acted inappropriately, and, as I said when we debated the patient safety commissioner amendment on Tuesday, I understand that the Paterson report’s recommendations echo what our report said. What has happened to the Paterson recommendations? I do not believe that anything has happened. If things have happened, I would like to know what they are. I can show shelf upon shelf of wonderful reports that have been drawn together by people who have put their heart and soul into them, but, actually, nothing has happened. I am not going to let that happen with my report—I really am not—because there are too many people who have been so badly hurt and who deserve redress, which we will come on to in the next amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is right that there is a missing piece in the jigsaw—the most important piece—because safety has to be a system.
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My noble friend Lord Bethell has talked about the different bits that are being discussed. They are being talked about—I will come to that in a minute. The noble
Baroness, Lady Ritchie, is absolutely right that the independent chair is critical, as other noble Lords have mentioned. Independence brings huge strengths. When we debated the independent patient safety commissioner we also referred to the Children’s Commissioner. When I talked to the Children’s Commissioner, she said: “The most important thing that I have is independence”.
When we were a review team, I accepted this commission and told Jeremy Hunt, who asked me to take on the task, that there were three reasons I would do it. First, I wanted to choose the people around me and appoint my own team. Secondly, I wanted independence and thirdly, I wanted a budget that I could call upon. The third one really did not happen, but every time I met those in the department I had to remind them that we were an independent review. That independence is precious and gives people the right to say the things that need to be said. The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, is absolutely right about that and about the timeline. If you are to implement something, you have to be serious about how long it will take. The timeline is critical.
We have also said that when the report is implemented, we do not want the task force to continue. We said, “It’s time they went—they’ve done their job”. In fact, I was responsible for setting up certain task forces as a Minister. I remember that it was terribly difficult to close the one on food down. Those on it loved their task force. They got remuneration for doing it and they were doing some good things, but we said, “No, it’s time-limited.” That is why I was anxious that this task force should be time-limited.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, so much for her support. She is absolutely right that the thing about this report is that it links together and makes sense. Some of it is about what is happening now, but most of it is about the future. As a review team, we kept saying to ourselves: what is really important is the future and ensuring that safety will be taken into serious consideration—and we need someone to do it, which is why we have talked a lot about the patient safety commissioner. The governance board, which she also mentioned, is really important. If you are going to implement something, you want some rigour. We tried to put rigour into the idea of having a task force, so the governance board was important in that.
My noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, who I know has done a huge amount of work on sodium valproate with the all-party group and beyond, when he was a Minister, is so right that there are lessons to be learned. Independence is the most crucial one, but he is so right on another thing: when you produce such a report there is a sort of hopelessness about it if it is not accepted and people do not say, “Yes, we think you’ve got some really good ideas, we will implement them”. We can make a difference and are determined to do so. We are setting up an all-party parliamentary group because we anticipate that we will not get the task force through today, so we are going to have another body the whole purpose of which is to implement these recommendations. We will launch it very shortly.
The urgency is huge. We cannot underestimate it and my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy is so right that as a nation and a society, we cannot expose more babies to being disabled because their mothers are not
told about the sodium valproate that they use to control their epilepsy. We cannot wait any longer and if nothing happens we will all have a terrible burden to carry into the future.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, very much for the work that she does. I was really interested in what she said about the Leveson inquiry. She is absolutely right: people put all their time and energy into the work of these great reports—you have to start with a very good report—but actually it is delivery that really matters. As I have said, what has happened to the Paterson inquiry? I wonder.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, very much for his contribution. He is absolutely right, again, about having an independent chair for the task force—somebody who is not part of the establishment but will take the position seriously. The independence is critical; we heard all about that when we debated the independent patient safety commissioner in relation to the Children’s Commissioner, who has always said that independence is essential. Take other people such as Amanda Spielman, who is doing work in the education field: you can jolly well tell that she is independent by the way that she takes on issues.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, so much. She is so right about accountability. It is no good setting things up that are not accountable. They have to be questioned. We are suggesting that the task force should be questioned and have not only an independent chair but the oversight of a governance board, to which it would be accountable. If we are to spend public money on these things, we must ensure the accountability is there and follow it.
I want to thank my noble friend the Minister for always being very generous about the report. That is true of everybody who we have met and spoken to. Nobody has said to us, “It’s not a thorough report” or, “Ah, but you missed this”, or, “You didn’t do that”. Our real worry was about the patient groups. Before we launched the report to the media we gave the patients the report and the weekend to read it. They had all of Monday and then on Tuesday we gathered them all together—virtually, obviously—and said to each of the 15 groups: “Just tell us what you think”. They might have said to us, “Sorry, we know that you put a lot of work into this, but actually it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. It’s a whitewash”. We had none of that. They were all so pleased with the thoroughness and the work that was done—not mine, but that of the review team, who worked their socks off to get it done.
I say to my noble friend the Minister: I value your generous remarks and your sympathy, which you always explain to us. Your sympathy knows no bounds—it is amazing—but I have to say that it is not enough. Warm words do not cut it. We need action. We need to know what you are doing in all these weekly meetings. How are those weekly meetings actually improving the life of patients? What is this work that is under way? So much of it you have told us; you told us when we were discussing the patient safety commissioner. We know all that, but there is nothing there that is going to implement this report. You are going to do other things—fair enough, you can do those—but there is still a lacuna, a gap, something that needs addressing.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, we need a system-wide approach. We need somebody who is going to gather the different threads together and ensure that we do have a system where patients are foremost. They are, after all, the reason for our National Health Service, for our regulators, for various bodies and for all the colleges in the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, all of which support us, but it is the patients first.
I fear that if we do not do anything about this quickly we will not produce what we can do. What we want is not for me or the review team but for the Government’s and Ministers’ legacy. Their legacy can be coronavirus, but this is a different legacy. The thing about this report is that it really has brought everybody together. That is so important at a time when the country is in such stress. We need to have absolute assurance that we have a real rock-bottom area where people are joined together. They want to see it. They want the implementation. Regarding other things such as specialist centres and so on, we know all that because we were working with them during the review.
I did not want to bring this amendment forward. I had to do it because I have received no ideas or whispers of what the Government think. I really feel that this is the time when the Government must tell us not just warm words but the way forward: “This is what we are going to do”. We have given them a chance, which is the task force. They can set up the task force and pass the implementation on to it. The task force can ensure that things happen. It will have to be accountable, as we have set out. That is all there. I am sorry but I had to bring this amendment forward because the Government have been as silent as the grave. They just have not come forward with their ideas on what they intend to do. I find that disappointing.
I do not want to press the amendment now. Whether I will decide to do so later, after thinking about it, is another matter. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.