Managing Risk in the NHS

Cheryl Gillan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am going to make some progress and then I will give way.

In addition, in September the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and Professor Tricia Hart will present their recommendations on how we can turn NHS complaints handling into an engine for improving compassionate care.

The right hon. Member for Leigh mentioned nursing numbers. Getting the right number of staff on wards does matter, and where that is not happening for hospitals in special measures it will be sorted out. However, to suggest that that is the only issue, or indeed the main issue, is completely to misunderstand what has gone wrong. Eight of the 11 failing hospitals had increases in nurse numbers since 2010, but they still needed to go into special measures. Training, values, clinical safety and, above all, leadership are often as important.

Labour has been calling for mandatory minimum staffing numbers. Let us look at what the experts say about that idea. Robert Francis said:

“To lay down in a regulation, ‘Thou shalt have N number of nurses per patient’ is not the answer. The answer is, ‘How many patients do I need today in this ward to treat these patients?’”

He also said:

“The government was criticised for not implementing one, which it is said I recommended, which I didn’t.”

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, because he knows that Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust was included in the statement yesterday. The trust welcomes his leadership and the opportunity to improve its performance, so that it can give the best possible care to patients in Buckinghamshire. Does my right hon. Friend agree that training goes to the heart of quality, particularly of agency staff? Would he like to say something about the competence, quality and checks that are made on agency staff, which will help to improve the health service across the country?

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. There are many locums who work extremely hard and are very committed. However, it is true that one feature of a number of the failing hospitals in yesterday’s report was that they had a high proportion of locum staff. It is harder to build up a sense of teamwork if there is a huge turnover in the people working in NHS organisations, and I know that many will reflect on that.