Health Service Commissioner for England (Complaint Handling) Bill
Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and David Nuttall(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Arbuthnot
May I begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on getting the Bill through Second Reading without any discussion whatsoever, then through Committee without any amendment and now on Report? On Tuesday, in the Committee deliberating on the National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill, during which hon. Members had the misfortune of having to listen to me speak for a little longer than normal, I said that in 28 years in this House I have never had a private Member’s Bill, so my right hon. Friend’s achievement is considerable.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
As one of those who had the good fortune of being able to listen to my right hon. Friend’s speech on Tuesday, I can assure him that it was no difficulty at all—it was very illuminating.
Mr Arbuthnot
Given that I spoke for four and a quarter hours, my hon. Friend is very kind to make that generous observation, but I am not sure that I share his view.
Over my political life I have often been asked what I would choose for a private Member’s Bill. In my early political life I would usually say something frightfully worthy, such as bringing in a Bill to improve the national health service. In my later political life, as my cynicism has grown, I have said that I would bring in a private Member’s Bill to abolish private Members’ Bills.
Mr Arbuthnot
Eric Forth was a friend both of my right hon. Friend and of mine. My understanding of his view was that all legislation was a bad thing, which is why, even when he was in government, he was in opposition, and would try to stop virtually everything. That caused some difficulties to me when I was the Opposition Chief Whip.
Every year I have put my name into the private Members’ Bill ballot and have dreaded the thought that it might, one of these days, come out. Luckily, it never has and now it never will. As my right hon. Friend says, there is a dilemma for someone who chooses a private Member’s Bill as to whether to choose something that is small and uncontroversial that Eric Forth might have allowed through, or large and making a great statement but bound to fail. It is rare indeed that a private Member’s Bill makes only a small change but in that small change he or she achieves something of great importance.
I suspect that my right hon. Friend’s Bill may be just such a Bill. I congratulate him on spotting so small a change that might be needed and then on bringing forward a measure that does something about it. I have read the proceedings of the Committee, which lasted for roughly half an hour. My right hon. Friend said that he was comparatively inexperienced in these matters, since the last Bill he piloted through the House of Commons was the Intelligence Services Bill in 1994. It is interesting and unusual to think of my right hon. Friend as a comparative novice at anything, but for a novice he seems to have done pretty well. Not many of us have our own legislative programme, so I congratulate him again.
In order to explain the purpose of my amendments, I need to start by setting out the purpose of my right hon. Friend’s the Bill in a way that, I hope, will not offend him and that will do justice to its importance. The effect of his Bill, as I understand it—he will put me right if I am wrong—is to ensure that if a complaint has not been resolved within 12 months of its receipt, the health service ombudsman will send the complainant a statement explaining why there has been a delay.
Mr Nuttall
My right hon. Friend has just referred to the ombudsman. Does he agree that one of the problems with legislation is that it is very often unintelligible to people outside this House? The Bill is called the Health Service Commissioner for England (Complaint Handling) Bill. Does he not think it would be beneficial if it was referred to as the Health Service Ombudsman for England (Complaint Handling) Bill?
Mr Arbuthnot
I like my hon. Friend’s suggestion. In Committee on Tuesday, he and I discussed the value of having legislation that is comprehensible to the people whom it affects, and this Bill will affect everyone in the country. The laws we make should not be written in gobbledegook that is not comprehensible to the people who own and enforce the law and who have it enforced upon them. It would be an improvement if the legislation referred to an ombudsman, because that is what everybody calls them, so I hugely support my hon. Friend’s suggestion.
Mr Arbuthnot
I have to say that I find that argument extremely persuasive. However, it is reasonable for the ombudsman to give some idea of how long an investigation is expected to take. After all, it is only an estimate, not a hard and fast guarantee. I accept that the estimate may turn out to be woefully wrong—I think my right hon. Friend was referring to the Sam Morrish case, a huge tragedy that was highlighted in Committee by all parties—but I am just suggesting that it would be helpful to give an estimate. People may be put off complaining if they do not know what will happen, and they will be less frustrated if they are kept informed during an investigation.
Mr Nuttall
My right hon. Friend says that complainants will be less concerned if they are kept informed during the progress of an investigation, but on my reading of his new clause 2, there is no requirement on the commissioner to keep them informed, merely to give them an estimate of the period of the investigation at its outset.
Mr Arbuthnot
My hon. Friend has spotted a deep lacuna in my new clause, of which I am conscious. He is quite right, as I would expect of someone with his forensic skills. There is not, however, any need for legislation, in the way my hon. Friend suggests, to require the ombudsman to keep the complainant informed because, as far as I can tell, the ombudsman already does her best to keep complainants informed. In relation to the changes that the ombudsman is making in modernising the ombudsman process, which we will no doubt discuss on Third Reading, she is going out of her way to start a public consultation to ensure that the changes are as friendly to the public as possible.
Mr Arbuthnot
I have to say that I have received no information from anyone who has had such an experience. My suspicion is that if one went to the ombudsman and asked, “How long is this likely to take?”, the ombudsman would say, “If you look at our last report, you will see that 99% of our cases were concluded within a year, so you can expect something roughly like that.” New clause 1 is merely an attempt at transparency.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention, which leads me directly on to my second point. I suspect that if the commissioner is approached by a member of the public, or indeed by a prospective complainant who has it more immediately in mind to make a complaint, all that will happen is that the commissioner will say, “Without a lot more information about the nature of your complaint, I can do no more than look at our history of dealing with complaints. If you look in the annual report or consult our website, you will see that 99% of cases are concluded within a year; to put it another way, there is one chance in 100 that your complaint may still be outstanding after one year.” Of course, that does not give the whole picture, because the ombudsman’s annual report states that it was able to conclude 67% of cases within one month. Therefore, two out of three cases are dealt with relatively speedily, which is probably as good as one would expect to find anywhere. Few complainants would expect their complaint to be dealt with faster than that.
Mr Arbuthnot
My hon. Friend is right to say that there is a one-in-100 chance of a complaint taking more than a year to be dealt with, but I should perhaps have said that there are only about three chances in 100 of a complaint being dealt with at all, because so many of them are outside the scope of what the ombudsman can look into in the first place.
Mr Nuttall
That is right, and it prompts a question about whether some advantage is to be gained by the commissioner providing more help at the initial stages to try to signpost people. Indeed, the annual report states that the ombudsman receives about 40,000 contacts a year, including queries about where and how to complain about public and non-public services. Of those 40,000 contacts, 27,566 were inquiries for the commissioner, which demonstrates that many members of the public will quite innocently contact the commissioner about matters that do not fall within her responsibilities.
Mr Arbuthnot
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) suggests that I might like to address amendments 1 and 2. During the last debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) pointed out that I was not suggesting that the health service ombudsman should keep the complainants properly informed and I said that I was persuaded that it was not actually necessary to do so. What I should have said was that I had proposed an amendment to do so in the next group of amendments, but during the course of that debate I persuaded myself out of the value of amendments 1 and 2 so I think it would be best for me simply to sit down and not move them. What my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said in answer to that debate satisfied me that more detailed legislation for the ombudsman, apart from the extent to which my right hon. Friend wishes to change the law, is probably not helpful.
In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I do not agree with the rather rigid approach that his new clause 3 might introduce. Inevitably, there will be some complaints that are so complicated and in which so many people are involved in answering the issues that it would be a bad idea to place on to the ombudsman a duty that, with the best will in the world, they might simply not be able to fulfil. During the course of the morning I have been looking for a quotation from Idi Amin, referring to someone who had displeased him. He said, “When we catch him, he will be executed. He will have a trial, of course, but by trial I do not mean one of those things that goes on all day.” I think that that is the approach favoured by my hon. Friend in the new clause. I hope that he will forgive me if I do not support his new clause and fail to move my amendments.
Mr Nuttall
I do not intend to detain the House for long on this group of amendments. Suffice it to say that I think there is merit in new clause 3, to the extent that it concentrates the mind of the ombudsman. At the moment, there is simply a requirement to report and that is the end of it. If nothing seems to be done, it just carries on. My concern is that the whole object of the Bill is to stop the situation that occurred in the case that led to its introduction, in which an investigation carried on for the best part of two and half years. As I read the Bill, it seems to me that there would be nothing to stop that happening again. A case could be reported as being outstanding in the annual report at the end of year one, and at the end of year two it could still be outstanding and nobody other than the complainant and the ombudsman’s staff would know anything about it.
Amendment 3 places a requirement on the commissioner to notify the complainant before the end of the period and again that seems to me to be eminently reasonable. Given that the purpose of the Bill is to try to get things dealt with within 12 months, it seems sensible that if it is apparent to the commissioner that that will not be the case, they should inform the complainant before the end of the period. Otherwise, quite legitimately, the complainant will expect the result at the end of those 12 months if they have not heard anything. It is pretty sensible to expect that. Whether that would happen anyway remains to be seen.
Amendment 4 would require the commissioner to provide at the same time an estimate of the target date for completing the investigation, which seems very sensible. The commissioner would say, “Look, we’ve not quite managed to do it in 12 months, but we certainly will in another three.” I see no reason why that should not be set out in the Bill.
I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) decided not to proceed with amendment 1, which relates to keeping complainants informed, as we dealt with that in the previous group. Everyone agreed that that was not a matter for legislation but should happen anyway as a matter of good practice.
I am rather less happy that my right hon. Friend has decided not to proceed with amendment 2, which would insert after subsection (4A)(b) the words
“the reasons for each of those delays”.
The general report, as set out in subsection (4)(a), should include details of how long investigations concluded in the year to which the report relates took to be concluded and how many of them took more than 12 months. That means giving a stark figure, for example saying, “We had 30 investigations outstanding at the end of the year.” It seems sensible also to require the reasons to be included. That would allow us to drill down and find out exactly what is causing the delays.
That leads me neatly to amendment 5, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). It would insert the following provision:
“If the reason for the delay specified in Section 2HA is lack of financial resources it shall be the duty of the Commissioner to set out the action which is being taken to remedy that lack of financial resource.”
I am reluctant to support that. In my humble opinion, it is almost certain that any public official will reach the conclusion that what they really need to make their job easier and speed up the service they provide to the public is more resources. Unless we expect them to start having jumble sales and raffles—we have all tried using our own resources in that way to raise more funds—really the only thing they can do is come to Parliament and—
Local Government (Religious etc. Observances) Bill
Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and David Nuttall(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)
I do not want to take up too much time because there is a lot of business to be got through this morning and I do not want to hold it up. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) says. He speaks, of course, as a prominent Roman Catholic, so I thought his answer to the last intervention on him was glorious. I have a probing amendment—amendment 4—which I almost certainly will not press to a Division.
I am a politician so my natural course is to wish to please people—if someone does not have that trait, they are unlikely to be elected—and so it is rather odd that I shall spend much of this morning disappointing people. First, I shall disappoint people by saying I am not in the least religious. My father was once the Second Church Estates Commissioner, and I was christened and confirmed, but since then I have lost those beliefs and the faith that I once had, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. This is the first time, however, that I have ever acknowledged that in public. It may be true that the pressure on a Conservative politician in particular to keep quiet about not being religious is very similar to the pressure that there has been about keeping quiet about being gay. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not gay either, but I just want to say that it is telling that it has taken me 28 years in this House—and, frankly, the knowledge that I will not be standing at the next election—to make this point.
I remember that when Peter Walker was a Minister answering questions in the House, he was asked something like whether his motivation for supporting a particularly right-wing policy had been sycophancy or cowardice, and his answer was, “Almost certainly both.” I would like to give the same answer for my having kept quiet about not being religious. So I shall disappoint some of my constituents, some members of my family—many of whom are strongly religious—and some hon. Members and hon. Friends by saying that I believe that the National Secular Society has a point: not everyone is religious.
In order to reserve a seat in the House on a crowded business day, such as Budget day, we have to put in a prayer card and come into the Chamber for Prayers. I do not have a major problem with that because I was brought up in a Christian household in a country that has an established Church of England, but really, why should I have to do that if I am not religious? It does seem to be a relic of the past. My hon. Friend said that this was our past and, although he was brought up short by an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), I think he was right. More importantly, the requirement to pray in order to reserve a seat seems out of touch with the country that we politicians are meant to represent.
Mr Arbuthnot
I will give way to my hon. Friend, who is himself a prominent churchwarden.
Mr Nuttall
My right hon. Friend mentioned that we had to pray in order to reserve a seat. Actually, as I understand it, we simply have to be in our place. There is no requirement to offer up any prayers. We simply have to be here and stand, or sit, in our place.
Mr Arbuthnot
That is a fair point, and I will come on to that in a moment when I talk about the potential contents of the prayer.
I was saying that the practice seems out of touch with the majority of the people we represent, because only a tiny proportion of our constituents go to church. According to the 2006 Church census, just over 6% of British people go to church. In a YouGov poll in 2011, 34% of UK citizens said that they believed in God or gods. However, according to the 2008 European social survey, 46.94% of UK citizens—nearly half—never pray. I find that an odd statistic, because it implies that 20% of UK citizens pray but do not believe in God.
Mr Nuttall
I rise to support the Third Reading of this Bill. As the House will be aware, the Bill received what I described in Committee as the equivalent of a bye in the first round of the FA cup in that there was no debate on Second Reading. There was a brief discussion about the Bill when the money resolution was passed. Apart from that and the Committee debate, today has been the first—and, indeed, the only—occasion on which the Bill has been discussed on the Floor of the House. Let me thank my parliamentary next-door neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), for introducing the Bill.
From time to time, we are faced with situations brought about as a result of an unexpected turn of events in the courts. Judges sometimes reach decisions that throw into question the whole basis on which we have previously conducted our affairs in this country. In 2010, earlier in the present Parliament, there was a court case involving Bideford town council, a member of which, with the support of the National Secular Society, objected to the holding of prayers at the beginning of council meetings. Prayers were included on the agenda as the first item, before apologies for absence. Although the council member tabled motions to end the practice, they were rejected, so—again, with the help of the National Secular Society—he took the council to court, where it was argued that the council had no power to hold prayers as part of its formal business. Everyone in the land had always assumed that councils did have that power.
It is testimony to the ability of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen that he has managed to pilot the Bill to its current stage, with the result that it is now crystal clear that councils have the power to hold prayers as part of their proceedings. It also clear that councils can take part in and facilitate religious events. That is particularly relevant to remembrance, and specifically, in my own local authority in Bury, to the marking of Gallipoli day.
Mr Arbuthnot
My hon. Friend is making a very good point about councils needing to be represented at remembrance events, but, speaking as one who does not have a belief in God, I wonder whether those events need involve God. I think it is very important for us to commemorate, honour and respect veterans and those who have died fighting for their country, and I have no objection to this part of the Bill, because I think that councils need to be represented at such events, but I find it regrettable that those events must necessarily involve something in which many people do not believe.
Mr Nuttall
No one is suggesting that those who have no faith should not be equally able to commemorate events of the past in their own way, but we have a long-standing tradition in this country of commemorating them by attending a religious service. Of course, there is no reason why those who have no faith whatsoever cannot organise a separate event with no religious content. However, I think that most authorities hold religious services. Bury council has a long tradition of commemorating Gallipoli day, marking it with a special Sunday on which it holds a civic service every year. The centenary of Gallipoli will be commemorated this year, not just in Bury but across the country.
For all those reasons, I am pleased to be able to support the Bill. I am sure that it will be given a Third Reading, and I wish it a speedy passage in the other place.