My Lords, it is again my great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I am pleased to attach my name to Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Lord.
I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, will mind if I explain why I am coming in on Amendments 67 and 68 in particular. It is because I was in a meeting and asked her what her next priority would be after the broad achievement of the patient safety commissioner. She said that the redress agency was in her mind as the next priority, which is why I have chosen to make it a priority in this Bill, in which I have become considerably more involved than I was originally expecting.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, did, I have to describe the Government’s response to the noble Baroness’s review as very disappointing. Simply very curtly saying:
“The Government and industry have previously established redress schemes without the need for an additional agency”
really does not engage with the arguments put by the noble Baroness in her report or reflect the strong support seen in the British Medical Journal editorial on 20 August, which expressed growing support for the entire review but particularly for the idea of a redress agency.
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It is worth setting out some of the context for this. On one level, in an ideal society a redress agency would not be necessary, or certainly not needed as urgently as it is now. Anyone suffering from illness or disability, whatever the cause, should be supported, given the resources that they need to live a full life as healthily as possible and given the chance to make a full contribution to society to the absolute top of their human potential. In such a society—with a universal
basic income, adequate funding for health and social care, full access to public transport and access in every building—perhaps we would not need a redress agency in the same way as we do now. There would still be an argument for compensation for avoidable suffering but not, as we are seeing in the case of children who suffer avoidable injury at birth, the need for many millions of pounds to be paid to cover the costs of support through life. However, I hardly need to add, that is not the world that we live in now.
To quote the noble Baroness’s report:
“We have heard from individuals who have described how they have struggled to access the benefits that they are entitled to … Benefits assessments are not straightforward and can be daunting and hugely stressful for individuals with complex issues.”
One thing that a redress agency might include in the current environment is support to help people to access the benefits that they need for their particular set of circumstances.
As the noble Baroness has said, although I shall put it more strongly than she did, families and patients do not like going to court. I would say that we all know that going to court is immensely stressful, difficult and—I hope the noble and learned Lords in your Lordships’ House will forgive me for saying this—sometimes something of a lottery. The result depends on the evidence presented on the day, in the moment, and very often on the quality of the legal representation available to people.
The noble Baroness’s report said that
“litigation has not proved useful to the majority of the affected individuals we have heard from.”
Again, while I am not aiming to set up a dispute with the noble and learned Lords in the House, there are conditions and circumstances in which a competitive contest is not the best way to achieve a just outcome in a dispute. That is something that has been accepted broadly by society when it comes to divorce. A reparation process is not a combative process but one that seeks to take the time necessary to consider the evidence, ask for clarification and arrive at the right level of compensation and payment. That is not without stress, but there is probably considerably less. Obviously, Windrush shows us that that is not a panacea, but it is certainly better than having to go to court.
I want to make another argument from a broad social perspective. Before I make it, I need to declare my position on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid. We have heavily overstretched courts around the land and heavily overstretched practitioners of legal aid, a service that is increasingly unavailable in many parts of the country. We have to ask why for medical errors we are putting extra weight on the courts when there is a better alternative approach.
I have one final thought. If I cannot win the Government over with arguments about justice—about the fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, that the current system is “completely bust”—then surely there is an argument here for cost effectiveness. The cost of people having to go to court to get redress for medical errors, mistakes and faults is enormous. Surely the cost of a redress agency would be much less.