NHS Shared Business Services Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Helen Jones
Main Page: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)Department Debates - View all Helen Jones's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(7 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is right. That is one of the most critical questions when it comes to trying to understand whether there was any actual patient harm. Ordinarily, if a patient was waiting for a test result that did not arrive at their GP’s surgery, the GP would chase it up and get a copy, so there would be no delay in treatment. However, only by looking at the patient’s notes can we understand whether any harm is likely to have happened. So far we have not identified any patient harm, but we will continue to look.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State told the House in February that all correspondence was kept safe and secure, and he has repeated that claim today, so when did he know that 35 sacks of mail had been destroyed by staff, and why has he not mentioned it since?
Mr Hunt
As the hon. Lady knows, I was informed at the end of March 2016. The issue with the correspondence that was destroyed relates to procedures around what it is legitimate to do when patients have been dead for 10 years. At the moment we are not aware of any specific risk to patients as a result of those sacks of mail being destroyed, but we will continue to look at the issue very closely.