Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very important group of amendments. The government amendment, which the Opposition are supporting, clearly comes on the back of the Francis report on Mid Staffordshire. I also point noble Lords to the very recent report by Dr Bill Kirkup and an expert panel of members, who looked into maternal care at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.

That report, as the Statement which we had last week in this House said,

“found 20 instances of significant or major failings of care at Furness General Hospital, associated with three maternal deaths and the deaths of 16 babies at or shortly after birth. It concludes that different clinical care would have been expected to prevent the death of one mother and 11 babies”.

It described,

“major failures at almost every level … mistakes by midwives and doctors, a failure to investigate and learn from those mistakes, and repeated failures to be honest with patients and families, including the possible destruction of medical notes. The report says that the dysfunctional nature of the maternity unit should have become obvious in early 2009, but regulated bodies”,

including the north-west strategic health authority, primary care trusts, the CQC, Monitor and the PHSO—that is, the ombudsman,

“failed to work together and missed numerous opportunities to address the issue”.—[Official Report, 3/3/15; cols. 158-59.].

For the purpose of our debate, the report also showed that the drive for a transparent and open culture in the NHS has some way to go. Notes were destroyed and mistakes were covered up. Dr Kirkup’s assessment is that it was,

“possibly because of a defensive culture where the individuals involved thought they would lose their jobs if they were discovered to have been responsible for a death”.—[Official Report, 3/3/15; col. 160.].

It seems from Francis, the Morecambe Bay report and our general experience of the NHS that there is a pressing need for a transparent and open culture, in which the protection of whistleblowers is an important element.

Ministers in this Government and the previous Government have from time to time issued various edicts about the importance of the protection of whistleblowers. There has been guidance on this, but it is clear that a whole swathe of staff in the NHS still do not feel confident about raising concerns on patient care. That is why the Opposition very much support government Amendment 58A but I, like other noble Lords, do not think that we can stop at the NHS. That is why I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Wills and the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Phillips.

As my noble friend Lord Wills said, there are “significant gaps” and loopholes,

“in the current protections for those making disclosures in the public interest”.—[Official Report, 26/1/15; col. GC1.]

While we have at least had a lot of debates about failures in the NHS, one has only to think of the issues following the Hillsborough football disaster, as my noble friend said in Committee, more recently in Rotherham with child abuse and then recently in Oxfordshire, again with child abuse. I am not sure whether this has been corroborated by an independent inquiry, but the point has certainly been put that a junior member of staff in Oxford City Council was subject to discouragement for raising concerns because of approaches made by Oxfordshire County Council, which was responsible for childcare, to senior officials in Oxford City Council to try to stop this person raising what seemed to be eminently sensible concerns about the way that these cases were being dealt with—or not being dealt with—in Oxfordshire.

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, mentioned the banking world and my noble friend Lord Wills mentioned the construction industry, which is a great example. If a construction worker raises health and safety concerns, there are very good companies in the construction world where they are taken seriously. Overall, my noble friend knows that there has been considerable improvement but there are companies where, if employees raise those concerns, they are blacklisted and cannot get work in the industry. Again, where is the protection for those people?

What about education, a notorious sector where if teachers raise concerns they can look for very little protection? In education, the principal or head often has a dominant role in the governing body. In schools and colleges, there are often no procedures whatever for whistleblowing. At least in the health service there are procedures and very strong corporate governance, with a tradition of company secretaries who should be able to make sure that the procedures work. In the education sector, there are no such guarantees at all. It seems to me that my noble friend and his colleagues are absolutely persuasive. We need protections which go far beyond the National Health Service. I very much hope that the Minister will listen to these arguments and agree either to support these amendments or come back with amendments on Third Reading which would meet the point raised by my noble friend.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Low, and my noble friend Lord Phillips for these amendments. I pay tribute to the tireless campaigning of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, on whistleblowing. I am not sure that we would be where we are, if not for him. I also thank others who have been involved. The noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Stoneham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, were involved in Committee. It is good and right to hear also from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, given the health aspect of this problem.

I make it absolutely clear that the Government share the widespread support in this House for whistleblowers and will continue to make strides in strengthening the whistleblowing framework, obviously not least because of the scandals at Mid Staffordshire and Morecambe Bay, which have been so eloquently referred to. That is why we are taking action through this Bill and elsewhere. I was glad that my noble friend Lord Phillips and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, acknowledged that. First, we are protecting whistleblowers from being discriminated against when applying to work in the NHS. The noble Lord described some graphic examples. Secondly, we are taking action to improve transparency in the way that regulators handle whistleblowing concerns.

On the first point, the Government have tabled an amendment in response to the recent Francis review. This recommended that the Government,

“review the protection afforded to those who make protected disclosures, with a view to including discrimination in recruitment by employers”.

Based on Sir Robert’s findings, we are convinced that blacklisting applicants for NHS jobs because they are whistleblowers causes a very serious injustice. They are effectively excluded from the ability to work again in their chosen field. When NHS staff raise concerns, they can save lives and prevent harm. That is why we are taking the opportunity, very much at the last stage of the Bill, to protect whistleblowers seeking employment in the NHS.

Amendment 58ZA, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, seeks to protect all job applicants who have blown the whistle. I have listened to his arguments around other sectors; I think that this evening people have mentioned policing, social care, construction, banking and education. I sympathise. No job applicant in whatever sector should be disadvantaged by being a whistleblower but—I have to use the word of the noble Lord, Lord Wills—when we debated this in Committee, I expressed my concern about the lack of evidence that there was a widespread problem right across the board. We do not have the level of evidence for other sectors on the nature of the gap or the scale of the problem.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Is the point not that for all the NHS’s failings, it probably has a more open culture than many other sectors? That is why we know more about the problems of whistleblowing there. In education, it is much more difficult to have central government intervention in cases where staff have clearly been intimidated. In a sense, some of these other sectors need much more attention. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, talked about the banking industry. Does anyone have any confidence at all that if someone working in the City raised concerns, even after the failures, they would be taken seriously? I rather doubt it.