NHS Long-term Plan

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

When I answered a previous question on the timing of the social care Green Paper, I said it would be provided “soon.” I certainly intend that to happen before April. My previous commitment was to do it before Christmas, so it is well advanced. But the hon. Lady is right on the legislative proposals. There is a broad consensus on the need for more integration, as my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee said. The proposals that are made by the NHS in the paper are what it thinks is needed in order to deliver this integration, which I very strongly support.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

No doubt my right hon. Friend is gratified, as would be the Churchill-led National Government of 1944, by how truly remarkable and amazing the national health service, the baby of that Government, has turned out to be. Will he assure me that this money does not come without strings and that he will enforce a much better system of lessons learned and, in particular, of disseminating best practice more widely through the NHS? Finally, will he please kick the work of the sustainability and transformation partnerships into some form of prompt result?

[Matt Hancock]

When I referenced Churchill, I did not realise that it would be in front of his family. My right hon. Friend is quite right about the need for a just culture—a need for understanding the lessons that are learned when things go wrong—in what is a high-risk business of providing medicine and medical care. Those lessons should be properly learned and there should be transparency and openness and a culture of constantly improving the way that things are done, whether that is medically, logistically or organisationally in hospitals. That is a critical part of the review that Baroness Dido Harding will take forward. It is something that she cares deeply about, making sure that we get the culture right within the workforce not only to tackle the high levels of bullying and harassment, which are completely unacceptable in the national health service, but to make sure that there is a spirit and a culture of continuous improvement and of learning from errors that everyone makes. All of us make errors, and we should learn from them and that culture should be inculcated right across the NHS.