Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

Gavin Williamson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said, and I am sure he is right; I do not think we are looking at other problems across our NHS of a Stafford-style scale, where this went on for year after year and potentially hundreds of people lost their lives prematurely. However, we do know that there are problems in parts of our NHS and problems in individual hospitals. One of the things we have to learn from this report is that when that happens we must not say that everything is fine and we must not have a culture of complacency. Instead, let us have a proper way of dealing with the problems. That is the big change that needs to come out of this.

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

Many of my constituents both use and depend on Stafford hospital. Will my right hon. Friend assure them that future nurse training will all be focused on care and compassion, and not on an obsession with targets?

[The Prime Minister]

The Care Quality Commission has said that Stafford hospital is providing adequate care. There was a recent inspection to check up on it, and obviously more work needs to be done as it recovers from this. We need to be absolutely clear that nurses not only provide amazing care, but are also well trained and can carry out some quite complicated medical procedures, and they are proud of that. They are often—dare I say—better sometimes than the junior doctor at putting in the cannula or whatever. We should praise that and we should want to have professional nurses. The key thing that needs to change as we employ and train nurses is that we make sure that at the heart of their reason for wanting to do the job is not just access to the qualifications and the career, but a real belief in compassion and caring, and that it is a vocation.