Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We have not had those discussions yet, but we will be introducing them through pilot schemes to give the devolved Administrations plenty of time to talk to us about any knock-on impacts they may have in their areas.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the decision to grant foundation trust status to Mid Staffs in 2008 was catastrophic in terms of the trust taking its eye off the ball and focusing on targets rather than on care, and that, now it is being abolished just five years later, never again must a Government pressurise a trust into a particular organisational form just to validate its ideological policy, rather than because it improves the care of patients?

[Mr Hunt]

I would also like to thank my hon. Friend for the work that he does for his local hospital in difficult circumstances directly involved in this terrible scandal. I agree with him: the corporate objective to become a foundation trust overrode everything else in the hospital, at huge expense to patient care. We must never allow that to happen again.