NHS Risk Register

Debate between Charlotte Leslie and George Hollingbery

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for clearing up part of this, but I think that the decision that was made by the Information Commissioner was on the strategic risk register and its release. No doubt we can discuss that later, but I am grateful to him for his intervention and for clearing that up.

More generally, we must consider whether the Bill has been properly assessed both in the House and outside by many people. There are 443 pages of closely worded analysis on the impact of the Bill, and the impact assessments cover every possible aspect imaginable, including risk management and the risks associated with the new Bill. That information has been in the public domain for many months, and I do not honestly believe that there is anything to be gained by issuing further risk registers that may scare a number of people about the things that they have to consider. The risk register would add very little. The answer, basically, is that it is an expedient hook on which to hang a debate: to raise again in the House a topic that has been raised a great many times—quite rightly, in many ways, as many amendments have been made to the Bill. However, the quality of speeches from the Opposition demonstrates to me at least that the point of the debate was not to discuss the risk register but to use it as a hook on which to hang a particular viewpoint.

It is well known that when the right hon. Member for Leigh was Secretary of State he refused to release the risk register. I have examined that, and I was going to quote him further at length, but the House has heard that quote several times today, so I will not trouble hon. Members with it again. The argument that he made then was a sensible one, and it remains sensible now. Do we really believe that it is good for the Government to make public all their plans for the management of every conceivable risk that they might encounter? Some of those risks will scare people rigid, and I do not honestly believe that that is the right use for the strategic risk register.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition should be careful about what they wish for in setting a precedent of publishing every single risk register? It may seem unlikely at the moment, but one day, they might be in government.

[George Hollingbery]

That is a fair point. As we have heard again today, Tony Blair says that he very much regrets parts of the Freedom of Information Act. We have all come to regret parts of the Act, and setting such a precedent could be awkward for the Opposition. When, inevitably, they return to power, they will find that equally difficult to manage.

If officials are inhibited in any way from having full and frank discussions with Ministers on challenging issues for the Government, that is a retrograde step, and we cannot afford to take it. I have no argument with the Information Commissioner, as it is his job to make assessments based on rational arguments made to him in the light of documents under review and, as he explained in his judgment, on the timing of the initial request. It is germane, however, to point out that in paragraph 29, the judgment discusses exactly the issues to which I have referred, and cites

“the ‘safe space’ and ‘chilling effect’ arguments which are well understood and have been considered in a number of cases before the Information Tribunal.”

In paragraph 35 the commissioner makes his judgment and states:

“The Commissioner finds that the factors are finely balanced in this case”.

It was not an open and shut case; he had to make a fine judgment. The Information Commissioner himself clearly found that a difficult decision to make.

As I have said, it is entirely right and proper that the Information Commissioner should make his judgment as he sees fit. That is what he is there for, but for my part, I believe that that is a dangerous precedent to set. We have to wait for the result of the Government’s appeal and any further iterations of the statutory process before we receive the final answer. I recognise the shadow Secretary of State’s challenge, asking why the Secretary of State would not simply acquiesce and open up the information to all. The simple answer is that there are very good reasons for not doing so, and I have just talked about those.

What of the Opposition’s plans for the national health service? Will the shadow Secretary of State publish the likely contents of the NHS risk register for and the relevant impact assessments of his own plans for the service? That might be tricky because, other than the fact that they want to cut the NHS budget, we have absolutely no idea of the Opposition’s plans, and, as far as I can tell, neither do they. I trawled the party’s website today and I could find literally nothing about Labour’s plans for the future of the NHS; as is the case in a great many policy areas for the Labour party, confusion seems to reign on the Labour Benches. At a time when there is an exponential increase in demand on NHS services and a huge increase in available treatments, and when money is in very short supply for the Government, the Opposition’s response, judging by today’s debate, is nothing, except what seems to me to be naked opportunism.

I shall offer a final thought. Perhaps political parties should also be forced to publish impact assessments and maintain risk registers on their internal musings at election time, in the interests of transparency. Had Labour had to do that in 1997, it would have been extraordinarily unlikely that the party would ever have been elected.