Accountability and Transparency in the NHS

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Lyn Brown

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), who speaks with a breadth of experience and history in the national health service, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on securing this long debate, providing an opportunity to all of us to say a few words.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) said, particularly about what seems to me, too, to be a growing public body desire for secrecy. This is happening not in the national health service alone, but in many other bodies. Indeed, as my hon. Friend well knows, it is happening in this House. I am concerned about a number of issues—how staff are treated, getting rid of the telephone exchange and a whole number of other decisions taken up there somewhere. We, as Members who work here, have very little say.

It is important for us to remember the Nolan principles of public life to which every public body is meant to sign up—accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. I do not want to say much specifically about what happened in Mid Staffordshire, but it was appalling. As someone who has had a good and well-led hospital in my constituency for many years, I find it almost unbelievable that all that could have happened in the Mid Staffordshire hospital with so few people seeming to know what happened or to speak out about it. Then, when it was pointed out, no one listened. That provides a terrible warning about what can happen. We all think that we know what is happening in our constituencies, but we do not always, as this episode has shown.

Let me talk about my local hospital Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College hospital and SLAM—the South London and Maudsley hospital. What has been called the “King’s Health Partners” has sought to bring together the research work at King’s College medical school with others, and the body is now growing to be almost an entity in itself, making decisions, sending out publicity and getting further and further away from the foundation trust.

Looking back to when my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) was Secretary of State for Health, some of the decisions he made in the Health Act 1999 were more about accountability than anything that has been done since by any Government. For example, he instructed NHS chairmen to hold their board meetings in public, while non-executive directors were required to live in the area served by the trust—a crucial step that fundamentally changed St Thomas’ hospital when we had a local chairman who knew the area, was involved in the hospital and cared about it. She spent all her time as chairman wandering around the hospital trying to find out about everything that was going on: she was accountable to everyone. That was crucial to the public, too, as they knew that they had people on the board who knew what was happening in the locality.

I believe that one of the first responsibilities of non-executive directors—they are not part of the management —is to visit the wards, to talk to patients, to collate local concerns and to talk to MPs, local councillors and the local authority. That was always happening. We had a very good system. There were concerns about the treatment of the elderly at one stage in one of the wards for elderly people at St Thomas’, but they got dealt with very quickly because we had a responsive chairman and a responsive board. A lot of that happened when my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras was the Secretary of State. The Health Act 1999 also gave the chief executive officer absolute personal responsibility for clinical governance standards—another important reform—in addition to the responsibility to be the accountable officer.

Later we had foundation trusts, although I have to say that I did not vote for them. I have had a well-led foundation trust up to now, but I did not feel that this was the right way ahead for the national health service at the time. We have got them, however, and some foundation trusts saw fit to erode the principles as financial considerations took precedence over clinical standards on many board agendas. The foundation trusts still remain the chief executive officer’s responsibility.

One thing the King’s Health Partners are doing in the name of foundation trusts is steamrolling ahead to bring about a merger of Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital, which is a huge trust, King’s College hospital, which is another huge trust, and the South London and Maudsley trust. It is believed that the merger will somehow lead to a “world-class”—I do not know how many times Members have heard the term—hospital.

I am furious and angry—as are, I think, all five of the MPs representing the area at how this merger has been handled. The lack of openness has been appalling and there has been no public board meetings or disclosure of information about the proposed changes. The proposals have been either badly put forward or not put forward at all. The board at St Guy’s and St Thomas’ has an occasional surreal meeting as a showcase for public involvement, but it never discusses the real issues. It opens meetings for the public only when it suits the board.

[Lyn Brown]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the plans for reorganisation of the trusts south of the river need to be put on hold?

[Kate Hoey]

That is precisely what the five Members of Parliament have asked for. Recently, on 28 February, we heard from the chairman of Guy’s and St Thomas’, who was previously a permanent secretary at the Department of Health. That takes me back to one of my earlier points about people moving around within the health service. It is always somebody who has been someone else in somebody else’s patch that gets a job with another NHS trust. This chairman wrote to say that the project is forging ahead with a full business case. William McKee, who brought together trusts in Northern Ireland, has been appointed and we are told that he is going to spend at least £5 million to bring about the business case to show why this will be such a wonderful idea. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and I have written back asking who is actively responsible, how the money from the different bodies is being allocated, what the precise budget will be and how it will be spent by whom. The whole accountability thing is there in a nutshell. Who is actually accountable? Does the Secretary of State have any say whatsoever? No. Apparently he is only interested if the move will clearly not be good for patients in clinical terms.

I know that the establishment of such a large trust will be totally against the interests of people. Trusts cannot operate on such a large scale. One chief nurse cannot be responsible for all those hospitals.