Countess of Chester Hospital Inquiry

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare that I am registered with the General Medical Council. I am a doctor and I have been involved in providing some support to the Nuffield review into disagreements in care of critically ill children, which is about to report. As the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, pointed out, this is unbearably and unbelievably terrible. I watched the whole story unfold almost with a sense of disbelief, except the awful thing is that one can believe it happened as it did, with the suppression of the whistleblowers.

That is what I want to pick up from the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Allan: we do not have a senior doctor on every board. The training of a doctor is different from the training of a nurse, a manager or an HR manager. That understanding of statistics is different. When a doctor tries to raise a concern but hits a brick wall, they need to be able to go directly to another doctor on the board to explore what they want to raise and because that other doctor is also subject to the GMC’s requirements. I quote from the GMC’s duties of a doctor:

“You must take prompt action if you think patient safety, dignity or comfort is being compromised”—


“must” being the key word. It was easier for staff to raise issues in the days when there was a senior doctor on the board. It did not always work, but I hope the Government will look at that as an action that could be taken much more rapidly. The GMC also says that doctors must contribute to adverse event recognition.

Again, as has been pointed out, these things have happened before: we had the Robert Francis report into Mid Staffs and the Bristol inquiry into heart surgery. Those people who have been whistleblowers have been traumatised, but nobody has been as completely destroyed as the parents when they know that their child has been killed. Child bereavement is overwhelmingly terrible, but when you know that it was from the action of another person it is even more impossible to come to terms with it.

I hope the Government really will look at whether some urgent intermediate action can be taken, and whether they can have discussions with the GMC so that doctors who are reported to the GMC as being difficult because they are raising concerns are not treated with some of the problems that have arisen, where we have seen doctor suicides and so on when they have been inappropriately referred. I hope the Government will seriously consider whether there needs to be a senior doctor on every board, both in hospital and a provision in the community. Even the appraisal systems that are in place do not seem to be working adequately to protect whistleblowers.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for bringing her knowledge and skills to this. Bringing senior doctors very much goes along with the sentiment that we were all trying to express about equipping boards in the right way to be the first line of defence in bringing such things up. I know that many boards have doctors on them, but the noble Baroness raised a very good point; it is something that we should take back. From my point of view, I absolutely see the sense in making sure we do that.