Care Quality Commission: Morecambe Bay Hospitals

Baroness Emerton Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I agree fully with everything that the noble Baroness has said. We have in the CQC the right team to take it forward. They are very clear that there needs to be a complete refresh of the senior team where doubts emerge about the individuals concerned. We are already seeing a complete refresh of the board. I share her worry about the tabloid press and calls for heads to roll. Nevertheless, it is appropriate, in the particular context of Morecambe Bay, for there to be a close look at the role of certain individuals: exactly what they did, what they knew, when they knew it and whether what they did was either wrong morally or against the law.

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, I wish to refer to the introduction of a new, robust, single-failure regime for NHS hospitals. This will provide a more effective mechanism to address persistent failings in the quality of care, including the automatic suspension of trusts. As a nurse, I was trained to look at prevention rather than cure. Ought we to be looking at, and including in this, the preparation of trust boards, as well as the staff, looking across the consensus of the trust rather than concentrating on targets? It is often mentioned in reports that they do not look at the quality. We need to see a much more cohesive trust report.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, this is one of the reasons why the previous Government introduced quality accounts, which are becoming more and more sophisticated and which focus the minds of a board on quality of care. It is easy to give the impression that we want to introduce a punitive culture into the NHS: we do not. However, there should be sanctions in the background to back up any serious failings of care. That is broadly what Robert Francis was driving at in talking about fundamental standards below which no care provider should fall. The CQC will be consulting on those standards later in the year, but I take the noble Baroness’s point about trust boards. It remains within the powers and competence of Monitor to suspend trust boards, either in whole or in part, where concerns arise over the governance of an organisation. That is a drastic power to invoke and they can take measures which fall short of it where appropriate.