Health Service Commissioner for England (Complaint Handling) Bill

Debate between David Davis and Luciana Berger

Friday 27th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I am not sure that the legal liability relates simply to the person bringing the complaint. It could relate to other people too, such as those contracting services. It also relates very much to reputation. Someone may, in effect, be asked to make a confession according to a timetable, which is not a good idea in a statute.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) in his critique of amendment 5. On amendment 4, I would leave that to practice guidelines, rather than putting it into law. It is dangerous, as I said earlier, to create lots of onerous responsibilities in law. The aim of the Bill is to exert pressure and give a degree of public guarantee, not to try to tell the ombudsman how to cross every t and dot every i.

The one amendment with which I felt some sympathy but am still uncertain about is amendment 3. I presumed from the Bill that the ombudsman’s department would respond close to the 12-month point when it knew that it might go past it. Earlier, it is likely to have to adjust the timetable; later is not tolerable. I am uncertain whether it may lead to perverse or unintended consequences if we do exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has proposed. I will have to think about that. The Bill has to go through a Lords stage. I ask my hon. Friend not to press the amendment today, but I give him an undertaking that I will look at the matter closely and see if I can come up with a form of words that I can suggest as a change in the Lords; I will let him know if I am not able to do that.

[Luciana Berger]

I shall not speak for long, but I think it right to respond to the contributions, and to speak on the options proposed by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). As we know, new clause 3 proposes to make it a statutory duty for complaints to be resolved within 12 months. We do not think that that is necessary. It is clear that the Bill sets out sufficient steps to achieve that. I agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that, as we know, the overwhelming majority of cases are dealt with within that time, but there are obviously reasons why it may sometimes take longer. As hon. Members suggested, there may be complex cases, other agencies may be involved, or there may be a historical or long-running case that requires the extraction of data from decades past, which it may take a long time to collate. It is often not the ombudsman’s fault that these things take time. We therefore do not think it appropriate to make meeting the 12-month deadline a statutory duty.

On the amendments, it is proposed that when the ombudsman contacts complainants, she gives them an estimate of how long the investigation might take. We discussed the point earlier in relation to new clause 2. We Members of Parliament can get updates from the ombudsman on the progress of cases and share those with our constituents if they want further updates. To be fair, if we think about all the processes in which we support our constituents, this is one in which updates are provided, and complainants are provided with information about how their complaints are progressing and when an outcome might be provided.

Amendment 1 would require the commissioner to keep the complainant informed of progress. There is nothing wrong with this in principle. We should encourage the ombudsman to do this anyway. As I mentioned, as Members of Parliament supporting those complaints, we can receive updates. On the point about financial resource, I have looked closely at the amendment and listened to the debate this morning, and think that where delays occur in the progress of complaints, more often than not that is down to the complexity of the cases, rather than a lack of financial resources, so amendment 5 is not necessary. We do not believe that new clause 3 or the five amendments are necessary.