Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

The simple principle at stake is the right of patients and their families and carers to know what has gone wrong with their care and treatment. It cannot be right that distressed, bereaved families have to resort to legal remedies for years and find out at the end of it that what they thought had happened had not happened. I have been told by patients’ families that I dealt with that it is like having a bereavement all over again. In the spirit of honesty, openness and transparency that we talk about a lot in the Bill, this proposal would ensure transparency—and, importantly, that patients and the public have complete confidence in the NHS.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

My Lords, I intervene at this point because I have all too real personal experience that may be helpful to the movers of the amendment. When she was still a teenager, my daughter was the subject of a terrible error made during a simple investigative measure. It was covered up by all concerned, who said what a tragedy it was that such a young girl should have got this illness, which was inexplicable. Because she was a private patient, we were able to bring in other advice that led to a conclusion which was that a very serious mistake had been made. She was hospitalised for three months. She suffered several operations as a result and, when she was finally recovering, we sought in law to get some kind of satisfaction.

We were not without means or influence, but no single lawyer would take the case. They said it was not in their interests because their main clients were usually health service providers or medical providers and therefore our case was not going to be taken. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, made the point that these people may or may not want to follow legal processes. I make the point that if that were one of the objectives of the amendment—which I hope it is not—they would have no chance whatever.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I intervene briefly to do precisely what the noble Baroness has just done; namely, to draw attention to an individual case that might influence the judgment of the Committee. In a former incarnation as a Member of Parliament, I received in my post an anonymous letter from a person in the north of England, which made major allegations about a hospital in the north of England where a child had been badly brain-damaged as a result of negligence in that hospital. The letter was unsigned, as I say, and the child's name was not included. I had the task of asking around in the community to find out whether they know anyone who the child might be or whether they knew anybody in the hospital who knew about the incident that had taken place. I suspected that the letter had come from a member of staff.

After some time, I managed to identify a family. I knocked on the door and a lady answered. She said, “Yes, it was our child and the health service has basically converted our garage and put a bed in it”—for this boy who was very badly brain-damaged and remains so to this day. The family had been to lawyers and been advised that that was the best deal they could get. The reason why that happened was because there was no duty of candour and because the health service covered up what had happened. I told the family that they should go to Manchester and pick a very smart lawyer whom I knew and ask him to handle their case. It took six years, at the end of which there was a multimillion pound settlement covering a lifetime's provision of care for this child.

There are many cases of negligence in the National Health Service. I have probably spent more time in hospital in my lifetime than a large number of Members of this House put together and I have seen it myself. You hear stories in hospitals all the time when you are sitting in a bed, although some of them are not so much about negligence as stupidity. I wonder whether we are really being sufficiently transparent in the way we ensure that the information is made available to patients and their relatives. I hope that the amendment goes through.