NHS: Clinical Negligence

Lord Ribeiro Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I completely agree with the noble Lord and make two points in response. He will know of the Secretary of State’s great passion for this area and of the maternity safety training funding and other training funding. From April, we will introduce the healthcare safety investigation branch, which will investigate each of the 1,000 incidents noted by the Each Baby Counts project which occur at birth, whether brain damage or neonatal death, precisely so that we can learn from that experience and make sure that those who provide these services are properly trained to avoid these incidents wherever humanly possible.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, we need to do something to tackle this issue much more urgently as the total cost of the litigation in the pipeline is some £65 billion—half the NHS budget. Until and unless we do something about changing Section 2(4) of the relevant Act we will have a continuing problem with patients claiming for private care when they should have their care provided by the NHS.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I agree with my noble friend; this is an issue, not least because, when that Act was brought in, the NHS was a very different creature and did not offer the extensive range of care that it does now. We need to make sure that we are not effectively paying twice. However, this is a difficult and complex legal issue. It is important that we take our time to investigate how we tackle it properly so that those who are unfortunately affected by poor care are not put at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives.