Health and Care Bill

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th February 2022 Lords Chamber

I said that a measure of a decent society is how well it looks after those who have suffered harm, especially where that harm has been avoidable. Having met many hundreds of people who have suffered and having heard from many more, I am clear that help is needed and deserved. People should not be made to wait any longer. I know that my colleagues on the Front Bench are compassionate people. I have met my noble friend Lord Kamall and others. I thank them for their precious time and I know that these issues are understood. On behalf of all those suffering now, I ask my noble friend to consider further and to seek a way by which a responsible Government can alleviate the suffering that has ruined so many lives.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 268, to which I have added my name, and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for moving it so eloquently. I also support the two other amendments in this group.

I declare my interest as chair of ISCAS—the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service—and because I have been involved personally in two clinical negligence situations. The first involved a death. We did not take legal action but tried to get answers. Answers were very difficult to obtain because all the papers that the hospital had disappeared. On the second, we had to take legal action.

Amendment 288 will, as discussed, do exactly what it says on the tin. It will ensure an independent review of the process for handling clinical negligence. The present situation where the only solution is to resort to law to get damages is far from satisfactory. Where a patient sustains damage, as my noble friend Lady Cumberlege so eloquently explained, the impact on them and their family is utterly devastating. In some cases, there is a need to get damages, because the situation means that there are ongoing costs for ongoing care, as we have just heard. They need financial help in these situations. Legal cases can often take years to settle. The one that I helped with took five or six years going over and over what happened, going to endless meetings, going to meetings with the lawyers and chasing the lawyers, who seemed to have dropped it. It was unbelievably stressful. I cannot think that anybody would want to go down that route unless they really had to. For the patient, if they are still alive, or the relatives, it means reliving and reliving the incident on top of coming to terms with the damage that has been inflicted.

Moreover, I understand that the costs of medical negligence have quadrupled in the last 15 years to £2.2 billion in 2020-21, equivalent to 1.5% of the NHS budget. I understand that about 25% of this goes on legal fees. I believe we urgently need to find a better way to deal with these cases, rather than resorting to the law. Not only do long, drawn-out legal wrangles put patients through years of unnecessary stress, but huge legal fees eat into the resources that should be available for front-line care.

An independent review would hopefully be able to examine and deliver a more satisfactory solution for patients and the NHS alike, and I hope the Minister can support this amendment.