Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I hope that we can have not just scrutiny but a proper debate. I am sure that the Leader of the House—who played a key role in ensuring that the inquiry happened, for which I pay tribute to him—will be able to make time for a debate at some stage to consider the report in detail. It is absolutely enormous, and I have the three volumes of it here, but helpfully volume 2 goes through the key areas—the strategic health authorities, the primary care trust and what the regulator did—so that we can see an outline of the concerns about the lack of focus on patient care that flow through it so clearly.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I compliment the Prime Minister on his statement and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on his response. I have not had a chance to go through the recommendations, but the Prime Minister mentioned the failings at trust board level. Will he agree to consider a recommendation from the health service section of my union, Unite, that a national intelligence unit linked to a national telephone hotline, which could be answerable to the chief inspector of hospitals under the CQC, could analyse the information coming in and identify where the problems were so that the chief inspector could take corrective action?

[The Prime Minister]

I will consider carefully what the hon. Gentleman says and I am sure that colleagues in the Department of Health will, too. My sense is that there is quite a lot of transparent information about mortality and morbidity rates, through Dr Foster and the rest of it. In too many cases, there has been an unwillingness to act and to act with enough clarity. We should focus on that, too.