NHS: Shared Business Services

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

To date, the cost of dealing with this problem is around £6 million. Clearly there is a contractual relationship between NHS SBS and various bits of the NHS. It needs to be established clearly, independently and objectively where the culpability lies for any incurrence of costs, both with the problem in the first instance and in dealing with it. Once that has been established, costs will be fairly and correctly apportioned to whoever caused the problem in the first place.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

Has the Minister seen the reports that managers moved many of the documents out of sight and actually destroyed many of them? If that is the case, it is very serious. If it were a wholly private company, its directors would be suspended pending investigation. If it is the case that documents were deliberately destroyed, will the most serious action be taken against the directors of that company?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

Clearly, if there were such an incidence, the noble Lord is quite right that it would be dealt with very strongly—but it is important to point out that there has not been evidence that that has happened. Documents were destroyed that sat within SBS, but they were not part of the backlog and they conformed, as we understand it, to the protocols around destroying old papers when they have gone past a certain time limit. So there is no evidence that what the noble Lord described has happened in this instance—but, as he points out, if it had happened it would be of the utmost seriousness.