NHS: Dangerous Waste and Body Parts Disposal

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I can say to the noble Baroness that the NHS contracts out very large numbers of services of all kinds, and indeed has contracted out this kind of service for around 30 years. What we have here is not a market failure but a company that has broken the law, and which is therefore being pursued by the regulatory system that we have in place. That is about making sure that the Environment Agency, in this case—because it is about environmental health—is monitoring, issuing notices and raising issues as they come up, which is precisely what it has done here. But I agree with the noble Baroness that certainly there are lessons to be learned about monitoring, and we are absolutely looking at that as a consequence of this incident.

However, it is very important to state two points. No risk to public health has been established, because of the secure circumstances under which the waste—albeit way too much of it—was being kept, and there was no interruption to the provision of services, so there was no risk to patients or to hospital operations. On providing information at the earliest opportunity, we have done exactly that. As I said, no public health risk has been established, and we came to Parliament on the first day it came back, once the termination notice had been in place with a part suspension.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, it is clear that this situation has gone on for some considerable time unnoticed, and it also appears that the incinerator network is not able to cope with the volume of waste generated. Will the Minister confirm that the incinerators are single use? When was the contract with HES last reviewed, and how frequent were inspections of sites? What is the timetable for being able to resume a sustainable service across all of England, and might this include new incinerators?