Winterbourne View

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, first, there is a criminal investigation under way and it would not be appropriate to launch an inquiry, even if we were minded to do so. As the noble Baroness knows, the CQC has launched its own internal investigation. It has admitted that there were failings in its processes. South Gloucestershire Council will lead an independently chaired serious case review, as has been mentioned, involving all agencies, which will look at the lessons to be learnt. The strategic health authorities involved have instigated a serious untoward incident investigation. The department will, after these reviews have been concluded, examine all the evidence and report to Parliament.

We want to understand not only the immediate facts and why things went wrong at Winterbourne View but also whether there are more systemic weaknesses in the arrangements for looking after people with learning disabilities and who exhibit seriously challenging behaviour. It is very easy to make the CQC into a scapegoat. It is difficult to ask of the CQC that it polices every room in every hospital at every hour of the day. We rely on the CQC and have been supportive of it. It does much good work and clearly it will want to review its own processes as part of this.

[Baroness Barker]

Does the Minister agree that when this abuse was taking place, a number of professionals, including nurses and doctors, must have gone into that establishment and that these professional bodies should start to conduct their own inquiries into what their staff were doing in there at the time? Secondly, a bad provider of care has everything to fear from an unannounced visit, while a good provider of care has nothing to fear. Does the Minister agree that as a temporary measure the CQC could consider conducting only unannounced visits in the foreseeable future?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. My understanding is that all patients at Winterbourne View have been regularly reviewed by a multidisciplinary clinical team in the past six months on behalf of the primary care trust that commissioned their care, and most of them in the past three months. I am sure she is right to say that those who have conducted such reviews should examine their processes and my understanding is that that is exactly what will happen.

We have endorsed the CQC’s proposal to launch a programme of risk-based and random unannounced inspections of a sample of the 150 hospitals providing care for people with learning disabilities. They will work in conjunction with local government improvement and development, ADAS, Mencap and with experts with experience of this programme. The spirit of my noble friend’s question is amply addressed in the programme.