Health Service Commissioner for England (Complaint Handling) Bill
Debate between David Davis and Christopher Chope(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Davis
Yes, there are laws of nature and there are laws of man, and in Eric Forth’s case, there are forces of nature which sometimes are the forces of man. It is a wonderful paradox, but given that it was my right hon. Friend who provoked me to conjure the five laws, I blame him, not myself.
My right hon. Friend made a very thoughtful speech, and perhaps met Eric Forth’s sixth law, which is that all this has to be tested—that is the point of this House, and it was Eric Forth, more than anybody, who insisted that we did not just shovel through, sausage-like, a set of laws because the Administration or some pressure group wanted them, but that we tested them, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North has been doing that this morning.
This reform is likely to be the first of a number picked up by the Executive, not by us. The Public Administration Committee is looking at this, the Department of Health is looking at it, the ombudsman’s office itself is looking at it, and the Cabinet Office is also looking at the issues raised by my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend. The Executive will be aiming to minimise the number of times complaints are turned down out of hand; to minimise the number of times people are told, “You’ve got the wrong department. Complain to somebody else”; and to minimise the constraints on the ombudsman’s office that might not permit it to intervene; and they will also be aiming to deal with the resource issue. It seems to me that we do not need to solve those problems. It is for the Executive to do so properly in Executive time, with debate going on across the Front-Bench teams. It is for them to deal with that; we are dealing with a simple problem here.
Mr Chope
When my right hon. Friend discussed the Bill in Committee, he contemplated the prospect of introducing amendments at this stage to reflect the outcome of the deliberations taking place in government and elsewhere. In the light of the Government’s failure to deliver a timely response, how much confidence does he have that they have the will to do this?
Mr Davis
A lot of confidence. I do not wish to pre-empt the Government’s forthcoming announcements, but neither do I want to push them into doing anything ill thought through. If the law of unintended consequences applies to anything, it applies to Government legislation—more than anything else. I am confident that this will happen, and in a way that will command support across the House. As my hon. Friend knows, it may be dangerous to make a prediction, but I think there will be agreement. Whatever happens in the general election, I believe these reforms are coming.
Mr Davis
I started off being flattered by the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that I had been in some way seduced into mitigating the Bill, but I think that I am far beyond the point at which seduction, either metaphorical or real, is an option. Perhaps that is why, when it comes to new clause 3, which I think is the most substantive amendment in the group, I am not as much of an expert as the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) appear to be on the subject of corsets. As I understand it, corsets constrict things at one point and let them out at another. The risk in new clause 3 is that it would put such constraints on the ombudsman that problems would be created elsewhere.
There have been two problems with the operation of the ombudsman over the past few years: not meeting timetables and making mistakes. On a number of occasions the ombudsman has got things wrong, which has made things even more acutely painful for the people seeking help and support, because the ombudsman has had to go back and correct mistakes. Indeed, that happened on a number of occasions in the very case that is at the centre of this piece of legislation. Were we to go down this route, we might create a series of problems arising from the ombudsman making erroneous recommendations and proposals, which would of course lead to the issues being multiplied down the generations, rather than dealt with straightaway.
We must also remember that some of the issues that the ombudsman deals with not only require information from other Departments and other parts of Government, but sometimes involve contested arguments and may have legal liability associated with them, so we should not forget that there is a natural justice aspect to this. Finally, these issues are very often on the edge of science. The sepsis problem was one such issue, for which the medical profession is still seeking new solutions. We should be wary of going so far on this that we cause another set of problems. That is why I think the Bill as printed strikes the right balance.
Mr Davis
I am not sure that the legal liability relates simply to the person bringing the complaint. It could relate to other people too, such as those contracting services. It also relates very much to reputation. Someone may, in effect, be asked to make a confession according to a timetable, which is not a good idea in a statute.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) in his critique of amendment 5. On amendment 4, I would leave that to practice guidelines, rather than putting it into law. It is dangerous, as I said earlier, to create lots of onerous responsibilities in law. The aim of the Bill is to exert pressure and give a degree of public guarantee, not to try to tell the ombudsman how to cross every t and dot every i.
The one amendment with which I felt some sympathy but am still uncertain about is amendment 3. I presumed from the Bill that the ombudsman’s department would respond close to the 12-month point when it knew that it might go past it. Earlier, it is likely to have to adjust the timetable; later is not tolerable. I am uncertain whether it may lead to perverse or unintended consequences if we do exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has proposed. I will have to think about that. The Bill has to go through a Lords stage. I ask my hon. Friend not to press the amendment today, but I give him an undertaking that I will look at the matter closely and see if I can come up with a form of words that I can suggest as a change in the Lords; I will let him know if I am not able to do that.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for putting that suggestion, which could help, on the record.
On the issue of excuses, I fear that we are entering the territory of double standards. When my constituents who are company directors are required to submit their company accounts by a particular day and fail so to do, or when other constituents are required to submit their tax return by 31 January and fail to do so, that failure incurs a penalty of £100 and there is no room for excuses such as family bereavements, delays by accountants or third parties and all the rest of it. In relation to the excuses made by Departments, or the ombudsman in this case, on which we want to place similar obligations, we are not consistent.
Mr David Davis
My hon. Friend has made a minor slip. The ombudsman is not a Department; it oversees Departments, responding to and being overseen by a parliamentary Committee.
At the end of the day, my hon. Friend may have a very good point about the timing of amendment 3. If he is right, the alternative would be for me to make it very plain to the ombudsman that that is what Parliament expects. It is certainly what I expect and what I intended in drafting the Bill. Rather than jeopardise the Bill, we should make sure, as is very easy to do, that the ombudsman understands that point, as does the parliamentary Committee overseeing it, which is our final recourse.
Mr Chope
My right hon. Friend is right to say that we are talking not about a Department but about a parliamentary sponsored organisation that tries to hold the Government to account. Yesterday, the House discussed the whole saga of Equitable Life, and what a long drawn-out saga it was. We know that the ombudsman tried desperately to get timely responses from the Treasury and other Departments, and was frustrated at every turn. Looking back at that, we can see that being able to say that she had a statutory obligation to deliver the result of an inquiry within a particular period would have helped rather than hindered her in the work she had to do.
Mr Chope
I hear what my hon. Friend says. In essence, the more usual scenario in cases of bereavement is that people want what they describe as closure sooner rather than later. The Bill has been introduced to emphasise that it is the will of the House that such matters should normally be dealt with within 12 months.
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend is wrong about one thing: the ombudsman’s power rests on trust in the accuracy of the case that he or she makes. Equitable Life’s problems did not arise from that, but from the complexities of moral hazard and other such issues. A better example was the case of the state earnings-related pension scheme, in which the ombudsman, the Public Administration Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, under my chairmanship, was able to get the Government to pay out what turned out to be billions of pounds because of errors identified from accurate—though not, as it turned out, fast—investigation. The things we must not jeopardise are the accuracy and effectiveness of the ombudsman’s investigations.
Mr Chope
My right hon. Friend gives an example of which he had direct experience. All I can say is that it is a pity that people who present their tax return late are not allowed the same indulgence—saying that their affairs are very complex, or that their accountant let them down—to avoid a penalty. There is an issue with ensuring consistency in the rules.
We have had a good run round the circuit on this matter. As in the previous debate, this again emphasises that, as Eric Forth said, Bills should never go through on the nod without proper discussion. Although people may have looked at the Bill and thought it a pretty minor piece of legislation, even such a Bill—I have not seen many that are more minor—is worthy of discussion to work through its implications. Having said that and thanked hon. Members for their contributions to this short debate, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Third Reading
Responsible Parking (Scotland) Bill
Debate between David Davis and Christopher Chope(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Why would we want to give the Scottish Parliament more powers when it seems to be agonising at great length over issues as trivial as the one we are discussing today? I do not think it has demonstrated that it can be decisive and in control of events.
Mr David Davis
There is another way in which the Bill is a gift to the Scottish nationalist argument. No one has argued that this problem is unique to Scotland. Indeed, it occurs across the whole country. If the Bill were passed, it ought to be called simply the Responsible Parking Bill, rather than the Responsible Parking (Scotland) Bill. Why should Scotland be different in this respect?
Mr Chope
I agree with my right hon. Friend. I believe in the United Kingdom. I was lucky enough to be educated at a Scottish university, and I would like to think that my degree will still be regarded as a United Kingdom degree, rather than one from a foreign country. I have given my reasons for not thinking that the Bill is in a fit state to go further in the House.