NHS Risk Register

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I want to start by praising the tenacity of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) in pursuing this issue, which is another unfortunate aspect of the Health and Social Care Bill. From its start until today, this botched Bill has been an unmitigated disaster. The Secretary of State has said many times, “No decision about me without me,” but when we listen to the arguments being put forward by Government Members we see that that is not what is happening. They are saying that patients cannot be given information or told what is in the risk register. That is all very poor. Also, when Parliament has so little business to deal with on the Floor of the House we ought to have proper pre-legislative scrutiny of major Bills such as this one. There was no opportunity at the outset to look carefully at each clause, but that might have been a much better way of dealing with this and coming up with something that all Members of the House could get behind.

I am also concerned that the only voices to which the Government seem to be listening in this whole debate are the private health care providers. When we see that £8.3 million has gone into Tory coffers and £540,000 has gone into the Lib Dem coffers from private health care providers, we wonder why we are hurtling at such a breakneck speed towards a free-market NHS.

I agree with the Secretary of State when he said:

“Where the NHS embraces a culture of transparency, of learning from its mistakes and constantly striving for higher performance, it is a world-beater.”

I fail to understand the argument that he makes about why the risk register cannot be produced to allow Parliament to scrutinise properly the Bill that is before it. It is disappointing that we need to have this debate today.

I am struck by the tone that the Liberal Democrats are taking. I understand that 15 Members signed the early-day motion that mirrors the motion before the House, and I know the Liberal Democrats have always championed transparency and information being made available to the public, so I hope that those 15 Liberal Democrats will join the Opposition and vote for the motion. I know that at the general election in 2010 the Liberal Democrats were not arguing for a top-down reorganisation of the NHS. As I recall, what they wanted was elected representation on PCT boards. The person who stood against me in Hull argued that to save the NHS, the next Government must end the break-neck pace of NHS reforms. That was what he stood on in 2010, yet the party that he stood for is now arguing in the House of Commons for reforms of the NHS at break-neck speed. Just as we have seen with tuition fees, armed forces pay, VAT and police numbers, there is likely to be another Lib Dem betrayal on this subject as well.

I shall focus on my major concerns about what might be in the risk register. I am extremely concerned about poorly performing doctors and how that will be dealt with. I know that PCTs, especially my own PCT in Hull, were taking positive action to deal with such doctors, and I am worried that with the chaos that will be created by the new structure, we will not be able to tackle those GPs. I am also concerned about Haxby Group, which has GP practices in my constituency. We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) about what was happening in York. At present the PCT can keep an eye on what is happening with Haxby in Hull, but as I understand it, in future there will be five different NHS regulators involved in controlling the position that Haxby takes on offering private health care to its patients.

I am concerned about medical education. Hull and York medical school is in my constituency. How will we get a planned approach to medical education for the future? How does fit with the NHS Bill? I am also concerned about social care. The acute trust in my constituency has the fourth highest number of bed-blockers. How will we deal with that under the new structure? Finally, on health inequalities, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), has said that northerners are “boozed-up smokers who are addicted to unprotected sex”. That is a paraphrase, but I am worried that the good work that the primary care trust has done through collaboration and co-operation on health inequalities will be lost because of the Bill.