Accountability and Transparency in the NHS

Debate between Alan Johnson and Phillip Lee

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Well, there’s a man who knows all the answers!

It was four years ago on Monday when I apologised to this House on behalf of the Government and the national health service for what happened at Stafford. We had just received the report from the Healthcare Commission, and I think it is fair to say that no one with any experience of the NHS could quite believe what had gone on. The people in charge at a time when there were unprecedented resources and investment being put into the NHS had cut staffing on A and E to such an extent that a receptionist with no medical training was triage nursing in A and E.

We need a longer debate. There is nothing ostensibly wrong with the motion, and I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) that we should support it, but it is clear from the way it was moved and the last contribution that this is all about the blame game. If I can just quote Francis—[Interruption.] Yes, the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) does not agree with Francis or with Ara Darzi and knows everything, and says that Francis was a Nuremberg—

[Dr Lee]

rose—

[Alan Johnson]

No, I am not giving way—at least not to the hon. Gentleman. I have heard enough.

This is what Francis said in paragraph 108 of his report:

“To place too much emphasis on individual blame is to risk perpetuating the illusion that removal of particular individuals is all that is necessary. That is certainly not the case here. To focus, therefore, on blame will perpetuate the cycle of defensiveness, concealment, lessons not being identified and further harm.”

So the man who knows most about what happened at Stafford hospital—and who was entrusted by this Government and their predecessors to conduct not one, but two, inquiries, and who in four volumes running to millions of words sets out what happened, why it happened and how it was allowed to happen—counsels against the very action that this motion appears to propose.

Francis identified who was accountable, and the Secretary of State was absolutely right: it was the chief executive, the chair and the board of the Mid Staffordshire trust. A number of clinicians are also held accountable for the appalling lapse in standards of care at Stafford. This accountability regime is set out in legislation approved by this House.

The Francis findings are consistent with those that emerged from the inquiry into the care of children receiving complex cardiac surgery at Bristol Royal infirmary between 1984 and 1995. In that case, five individuals at the hospital, including the chief executive, were the subject of adverse comments. In respect of both Bristol and Stafford, an argument was made to an inquiry that there was an extenuating failure of national policy. At Stafford, it was national targets; at Bristol, it was inadequate resources.

It is worth recalling the Bristol inquiry’s response. Sir Ian Kennedy said:

“The inadequacy in resources for PCS”—

paediatric cardiac surgery—

“at Bristol was typical of the NHS as a whole. From this, it follows that whatever went wrong at Bristol was not caused by lack of resources. Other centres laboured under the same or similar difficulties.”

We must remember that these were the days when one in every 25 patients on the cardiac waiting list died before they could be operated on, and when somebody with a serious heart condition could wait a year to see the cardiologist, three months to see the consultant and then 18 months to two years for the operation. That is why targets had to be introduced—to get a grip on this awful situation.