Woolwich and the EU Council

Debate between Lord Hill of Oareford and Earl Attlee

Monday 3rd June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her overall welcome, and I associate myself very much with many of the points that she made, particularly about the awful situation in Woolwich.

On the noble Baroness’s specific questions on the Statement and the proposals on tax, our view—and it may be hers as well—is that it is best if this is done on an international basis. We can use the G8—as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is doing—the G20 and the OECD to drive that agenda forward. We need to take action. It is a global problem and it is best to address it in that way.

I agree very much with the noble Baroness’s comments about the overall situation in Syria. I think she said that there are no good options and that we are talking about the least bad option, and I very much take that point.

On Geneva 2, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary—the Government—have always been clear that we are very much in favour of a negotiated political solution, so we welcome the fact that the Russian/American talks will be taking place. That is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister himself has had talks with Presidents Putin and Obama to try to bring about diplomatic pressure, so that all sides will come to the table.

As for the risks of lifting the EU arms embargo, as the Statement made clear, it would be wrong to deny that there are risks with all courses of action. However, the risks of inaction are also clear to see. As the noble Baroness made clear in her comments about the numbers of those already displaced and suffering and the numbers who have been killed, the price of doing nothing is extraordinarily high.

As for the safeguards on the use of weapons, the framework agreed at the Council made it clear that any provision of arms would be only to the Syrian national coalition, and it has to be intended for the protection of civilians. There are safeguards to ensure that delivery goes to the right hands, and confirmation that existing obligations on arms exports remain in place.

As for the flexibility of the embargo, the Foreign Secretary regularly updates the House of Commons on developments. I know that he will continue to do so. Things can move fast and he needs to be able to reflect and respond to that.

On Woolwich, I associate myself with the noble Baroness’s praise for the local leaders. I agree with her about the three things she set out that we, all of us together, need to do—to bring the perpetrators to justice, to bring people together and to learn the lessons. I am grateful to her for her welcome for the new task force on extremism and, indeed, for the role that the ISC will be carrying out. She made a number of practical suggestions on points to do with earlier intervention and with violent extremism and gangs and the link between them. They are very sensible points. There is no monopoly of wisdom here and we should be open to all kinds of sensible, intelligent suggestions from people who know, and try to take those into account.

As for communications data and legislation, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister earlier this afternoon made clear that we need to have a frank debate about this issue. There is a problem—we know that 95% of serious crimes involve the use of communications data—but it needs to be addressed in a sensitive and careful way. If we can find a way of getting cross-party support to take this forward that would be desirable.

Overall, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the support she gave for the steps that the Government have taken specifically on Woolwich, and I associate myself with the tributes that she paid to the people involved in that situation.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, perhaps I may remind the House of the benefit of short questions for my noble friend the Leader so that he can answer as many questions as possible.

Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust Inquiry

Debate between Lord Hill of Oareford and Earl Attlee

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, will the Minister make it clear that brief interventions are required? Otherwise not everyone will be heard.

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord has taken the words out of my mouth.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, with the leave of the House I will now repeat a Statement made earlier in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:

“Today Robert Francis has published the report of the public inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Mr Speaker, I have a deep affection for our National Health Service. I will never forget all of the things doctors and nurses have done for my family in times of pain and difficulty. I love our NHS. I think it is a fantastic institution and a great organisation that says a huge amount about our country and who we are. I always want to think the best about it. I have huge admiration for the doctors, nurses and other health workers who dedicate their lives to caring for our loved ones.

Nevertheless, we do them—and the whole reputation of our NHS—a grave disservice if we fail to speak out when things go wrong. What happened at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and 2009 was not just wrong, it was truly dreadful. Hundreds of people suffered from the most appalling neglect and mistreatment. There were patients so desperate for water that they were drinking from dirty flower vases. Many were given the wrong medication, treated roughly, or left to wet themselves and then to lie in urine for days. Relatives were ignored or even reproached when they pointed out the most basic things which could have saved their loved ones from horrific pain or even death. We can only begin to imagine the suffering endured by those whose trust in our health service was betrayed at their most vulnerable moment. That is why I believe it is right to make this Statement today.

There was a healthcare commission investigation in 2000; a first independent inquiry from Robert Francis in February 2010; and, long before that, the testimony of bereaved relatives such as Julie Bailey and the Cure the NHS campaign. They all laid bare the most despicable catalogue of clinical and managerial failures at the trust. But even after these reports, some really important questions remained unanswered. How were these appalling events allowed to happen and how were they allowed to continue for so long? Why were so many bereaved families and whistleblowers who spoke out ignored for so long? Could something like this ever happen again? These were basic questions about wider failures in the system—not just at the hospital but right across the NHS, including its regulators and the Department of Health. That is why the families called for this public inquiry and that is why this Government granted one. I am sure that the whole House will want to join with me in expressing our thanks to Robert Francis and his entire team for all their work over the past three years.

The inquiry finds that the appalling suffering at Mid-Staffordshire hospital was primarily caused by a “serious failure” on the part of the trust board, which failed to listen to patients and staff and failed to tackle what Robert Francis calls “an insidious negative culture involving a tolerance of poor standards and a disengagement from managerial and leadership responsibilities”. But the inquiry finds that the failure went far wider. The primary care trust assumed that others were taking responsibility and so made little attempt to collect proper information on the quality of care.

The strategic health authority was “far too remote from the patients it was there to serve, and it failed to be sufficiently sensitive to signs that patients might be at risk”. Regulators, including Monitor and the then Healthcare Commission, failed to protect patients from substandard care. Too many doctors “kept their heads down” instead of speaking out when things went wrong. The Royal College of Nursing was “ineffective both as a professional representative organisation and as a trade union”, and the Department of Health too remote from the reality of the services that they oversee.

The way Robert Francis chronicles the evidence of systemic failure means we cannot say with confidence that failings of care are limited to one hospital. But let us also be clear about what the report does not say. Francis does not blame any specific policy; he does not blame the previous Secretary of State for Health; and he says we should not seek scapegoats. Looking beyond the specific failures that he catalogues so clearly, I believe we can identify in the report three fundamental problems with the culture of our National Health Service.

The first is a focus on finance and figures at the expense of patient care; Francis says that explicitly. This was underpinned by a preoccupation with a narrow set of top-down targets pursued in the case of Mid Staffordshire to the exclusion of patient safety or listening to what patients, relatives—and indeed many staff—were saying.

Secondly, there was an attitude that patient care was always someone else’s problem. In short, no one was accountable. Thirdly, he talks about defensiveness and complacency. Instead of facing up to and acting on data which should have implied a real cause for concern, Francis finds, all too often, a culture of explaining only the positives rather than any critical analysis. Put simply, managers were suppressing inconvenient facts in favour of looking for comfort in positive information.

That is one of the most disturbing findings. It is bad enough that terrible things happened at that hospital, but this inquiry is telling us is that there was a manifest failure to act on the data available not just at the hospital but more widely. As Francis says:

“In the end, the truth was uncovered … mainly because of the persistent complaints made by a determined group of patients and those close to them”.

The anger of the families is completely understandable. Every honourable Member in this House would be angry—furious—if their mother or father were treated in this way, and rightly so.

The previous Government commissioned the first report from Robert Francis and, when he saw that report, the former Secretary of State, now the shadow Health Secretary, was right to apologise for what went wrong. This public inquiry not only repeats earlier findings but also shows wider systemic failings, so I would like to go further as Prime Minister and apologise to the families of all those who have suffered for the way that the system allowed such horrific abuse to go unchecked and unchallenged for so long. On behalf of the Government—and indeed our country—I am truly sorry.

Since the problems at Mid Staffordshire Hospital first came to light, a number of important steps have been taken. The previous Government set up the National Quality Board and the quality accounts system. This Government have put compassion ahead of process-driven bureaucratic targets and put quality of care on a par with quality of treatment. We have set that out explicitly in the mandate of the NHS Commissioning Board, together with a new vision for compassionate nursing. We have introduced a tough new programme for tracking and eliminating falls, pressure sores and hospital infections, and we have demanded nursing rounds every hour, in every ward of every hospital.

However, it is clear that we need to do more. We will study every one of the 290 recommendations in today’s report and respond in detail next month, but the recommendations include the three core areas—patient care, accountability and defeating complacency—on which I believe we should make more immediate progress. Let me say a word about each.

The first is how we put patient care ahead of finances. Today, when a hospital fails financially, its chair can be dismissed and the board suspended, but failures in care rarely carry such consequences. That is not right. We will create a single failure regime where the suspension of the board can be triggered by failures in care as well as failures in finance, and we will put the voice of patients and staff at the heart of the way that hospitals go about their work.

In Mid Staffordshire, as far back as 2006, there was a survey in which only about a quarter of staff said that they would actually want one of their own relatives to use the hospital they worked in. During the following two years, bereaved relatives produced case after dreadful case and campaign after chilling campaign, but those voices and horrific cases were ignored. Indeed, the hospital was upgraded to foundation trust status during that period. We need the words of patients and front-line staff to ring through the boardrooms of hospitals and beyond to the regulators and the Department of Health itself.

From this year every patient, every carer, every member of staff will be given the opportunity to say whether they would recommend their hospital to their friends or family. This will be published and the board will be held to account for its response. Put simply, where a significant proportion of patients or staff raise serious concerns about what is happening in a hospital, immediate inspection will result and suspension of the hospital board may well follow.

Quality of care means not accepting that bed sores and hospital infections are somehow occupational hazards and that a little of them is somehow okay. They are not okay. They are unacceptable—full stop, end of story. That is what zero harm means. I have asked Don Berwick—who has advised President Obama on this issue—to make zero harm a reality in our NHS.

Francis makes other recommendations. Today, you can give hands-on care in a hospital ward with no training at all. Francis says that that is wrong, and I agree. Some simple but profound things need to happen in our NHS and our hospitals. Nurses should be hired and promoted on the basis of having compassion as a vocation, not just academic qualifications. We need a style of leadership from senior nurses which means that poor practice is not tolerated and is driven off the wards. Another issue is whether pay should be linked to quality of care rather than just time served at a hospital. I favour this approach.

Secondly, there is accountability and transparency. The first Francis report set out clearly what happened within Stafford hospital. It should have led to those responsible being brought to book by the board, the regulators, the professional bodies—and, yes, even by the courts. But this did not happen.

Most people will want to know why on earth not. We expect hospitals to take disciplinary action against staff who abuse their patients. We expect professional regulators to strike off doctors and nurses who seriously breach their professional codes, and, yes, we expect the justice system to prosecute those suspected of criminal acts, whether they take place in a hospital or anywhere else. In Stafford, these expectations were badly let down. The system failed. That is one of the main reasons we needed this inquiry.

Now that the recommendations about systemic failure are public, the regulatory bodies in particular have difficult questions to answer. The Nursing and Midwifery Council and the General Medical Council need to explain why, so far, no one has been struck off. The Secretary of State for Health has today invited them to explain what steps they will take to strengthen their systems of accountability in the light of this report, and we will ask the Law Commission to advise on sweeping away the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s outdated and inflexible decision-making processes.

The Health and Safety Executive also needs to explain its decisions not to prosecute in specific cases. Indeed, Robert Francis makes a strong argument that the executive is too distant from hospitals and not the right organisation to be focusing on healthcare and criminal prosecutions in such cases. We will look closely at his recommendation to transfer the right to conduct criminal prosecutions from the Health and Safety Executive to the Care Quality Commission.

Thirdly, we must purge the culture of complacency that is undermining care in our country. This requires a clear view about what is acceptable and what is not. In our schools, we have a clear system of deciding whether a school has the right culture and whether it is succeeding or failing. It is a system based on the judgment of independent experts, who walk the corridors of the school and analyse more than just statistics. The public therefore know which schools near them are outstanding and which are failing. They have a right to know the same about our hospitals. We need a hospital inspection regime that does not just look at numerical targets but examines the quality of care and makes an open, public and explicit judgment.

So I have asked the Care Quality Commission to create a new post—a Chief Inspector of Hospitals—to take personal responsibility for this task. I want the new inspections regime to start this autumn. We will look at the law to make sure that the inspector’s judgment is about whether a hospital is clean, safe and caring, rather than just an exercise in bureaucratic box-ticking. In the mean time, I have asked the NHS Medical Director—Professor Sir Bruce Keogh—to conduct an immediate investigation into care at hospitals with the highest mortality rates and to check that urgent remedial action is being taken.

Complacency in the system has meant that all too often, patient complaints have been ignored. I am today asking the honourable Member for Cynon Valley and the Chief Executive of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Tricia Hart, specifically to advise how hospitals in the NHS should handle complaints better in future.

I have talked today about some of the systemic failures, but at the heart of any system are the people who work in it and the values and vocation that they hold. As Francis says early on in his report, and it is worth me quoting in full:

‘Healthcare is not an activity short of systems intended to maintain and improve standards, regulate the conduct of staff, and report and scrutinise performance. Continuous efforts have been made to refine and improve the way these work. Yet none of them, from local groups to the national regulators, from local councillors to the Secretary of State, appreciated the scale of the deficiencies at Stafford and, therefore, over a period of years did anything effective to stop them’.

What makes our National Health Service special is the very simple principle that the moment you are injured or fall ill, the moment something happens to someone you love, you know that whoever you are, wherever you are from, whatever is wrong, however much you have in the bank, there is a place you can go where people will look after you and do everything they can to make things right again. The shocking truth is that this precious principle of British life was broken in Mid Staffordshire. We would not be here today without the tireless campaigning of the families who suffered so terribly, and I am sure that the whole House will join with me in paying tribute to their incredible courage and determination over these long and painful years.

When I met Julie Bailey and the families again on Monday, she said to me that she wanted the legacy of their loved ones to be an NHS safe for everyone. That is the legacy that together we must secure. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.