HEALTH

Debate between John Healey and Nigel Evans

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)

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I wish to take the unusual step of telling the House and the Minister about the individual case of little Vinny Duggan to highlight a wider problem that the Government can solve by making legal changes so that other patients and other parents such as Andy and Andrea Duggan do not have to go through what this family has gone through in the past two and a half years. As Andrea has said to me, this is their fight, but it is also a fight for other people in their position.

I have been involved with the parents in the quest for information for only 10 months, whereas Mr and Mrs Duggan have been battling since Vinny was born nearly two and half years ago. At times, Vinny has fought for life. He is now a little lad who is full of life. I was with the family on Saturday, and he was smiling, laughing, climbing on the sofa and climbing on me, but he has a very serious congenital heart and lung condition. He has brain damage, likely to have been caused by a lack of oxygen, and he is unlikely ever to be able to speak. His parents have told me that they are very proud of Vinny and very grateful that they still have him here.

It has been touch and go at times. He was born on 20 August 2010 at Doncaster royal infirmary. He was full term and was a healthy 7 lb 9 oz. However, within the first day his mum, in particular, became concerned that he was very blue, that he was not feeding properly and that he was very sleepy. The following day, he was diagnosed with a heart murmur and the day after that he was discharged against the parents’ wishes, as they were concerned and wanted tests done before he was discharged. He was at home for two days and after that time, when he had not properly woken up or properly fed and had stopped wetting his nappies, they phoned the hospital and were advised to take him to the children’s observational unit, where they arrived at 7 o’clock that evening.

Within the first hour, they were assessed by a triage nurse as non-urgent—green, in other words—and had to wait almost another five hours before a doctor saw them. During that night, Vinny was put on a heart monitor and given the tests he needed. He had a very high heart rate and was transferred rapidly to the specialist unit at Leeds general infirmary. He was diagnosed as having a very serious life-threatening heart and lung condition. He was given open heart and major lung surgery and spent five months in Leeds hospital, six weeks of that in intensive care and 10 weeks in the high-dependency unit.

The internal investigation at Doncaster hospital afterwards concluded that there were “no real concerns” about the standard of care in Vinny’s case, despite the fact that there were many chances to notice that he was unwell, to do the tests that could have been required and to listen to Mr and Mrs Duggan’s concerns. There remain important discrepancies between the evidence of the parents and that of some of the staff and the hospital in the investigation. It took two years and a new chief executive before, six weeks ago, Mr and Mrs Duggan received a welcome letter from the new acting chief executive, Mike Pinkerton, who ended by saying:

“The care that Vinny received fell below the standard you have a right to expect from us and I do sincerely apologise.”

Like so many other parents, Mr and Mrs Duggan had principally wanted an explanation—not retribution or compensation. However, like many parents, they were driven down the route of trying to get answers through the courts, and that is what they are having to do. They also rightly turned to the professional body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which is responsible for regulating Britain’s 670,000 nurses and midwives. Mrs Duggan submitted a complaint in September 2011, which was turned down in January 2012. She challenged it, which caused the council to look again at the argument that there was no case to answer, and the internal review concluded that the case should be referred back to the investigating committee for reconsideration.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council, however, has limited powers to review its decisions and that has been reinforced and restricted further by a High Court judgment in May in the case of R(B) v. NMC 2012. In other words, the NMC does not have the legal powers it needs to review its own decisions. The chief executive, Jackie Smith, was good enough to meet me in the summer and to agree to commission independent legal advice on Vinny’s case and on the NMC’s restrictions. That independent legal advice came from Mark Shaw QC, who concluded:

“The Order and Rules makes it plain that the NMC has no statutory power to review, re-open or reverse a disciplinary decision (in particular, a decision of the Investigating Committee that a registrant has no case to answer) beyond the specific circumstances stipulated in rule 7, namely: receipt of a fresh allegation within three years of the dismissal of a previous allegation against the same registrant.”

He went on to point out:

“Typically, other professional regulators have wider review powers, granted explicitly by secondary legislation.”

Those other professional bodies include the General Medical Council, which is responsible for regulating Britain’s 250,000 registered doctors. The GMC’s powers were rightly extended in 2004, so it has the power to review and reopen a complaint, to take a view that its earlier decisions might be flawed, to take new evidence into account and to act. It is considering a review of the complaint lodged with it about a doctor involved in this case and we expect a decision imminently.

The General Optical Council and the General Pharmaceutical Council have similar powers; the General Dental Council does not. At a time when complaints from patients are rising and pressures on staff are increasing, if we are to maintain trust and confidence in our health professionals and the NHS, we must have a better and more open system of complaints and we must have regulators with the powers to do the job they are set up to do: safeguard professional standards and safeguard patients and the public, too.

I know the Law Commission is reviewing the common enabling legislative framework for all health regulators. That could take three years, so I want the Minister to confirm today that he knows that there is a problem and that in the meantime, in advance of the Law Commission’s report, he will act to change the operating rules and orders so that those professional bodies can do the job. Otherwise, many other patients and parents will face the same fight for the truth—

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)

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Order.

Local Government Finance

Debate between John Healey and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister has tried to help the House and said he wanted to be clear, but he has just made the fundamental mistake, which I think he needs to correct, of citing precepts and not levies in the examples he gave. He therefore underlines rather than undermines my point.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The right hon. Gentleman has got his point across.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between John Healey and Nigel Evans

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I am more interested in what we will be facing in future. I am more interested in the claim by the Health Secretary that there will not be, as he describes it, a rigged market in future, but a level playing field for all providers. However, my hon. Friend—[Interruption.] Well, we will see. The hon. Gentleman is a member of the Select Committee on Health, and he follows such matters closely. I urge him to read page 42 onwards of the impact assessment, because there he will see the preparations for being able to pay for the sort of thing that he criticises in the health service.

As the hon. Gentleman gives me this opportunity, let me say to him and his Lib Dem colleagues that what we are facing is clearly Conservative health policy, not coalition health policy, and certainly not Lib Dem health policy. The main evidence of any influence of Lib Dem ideas on health policy in the coalition agreement was the commitment to

“ensure that there is a stronger voice for patients locally through directly elected individuals on the boards of their local primary care trust”.

The Bill abolishes PCTs. The Lib Dem policy priority before the election was to ensure that local people had more control over their health services. The Bill places sweeping powers in the hands of a new national quango—the national commissioning board—and a new national economic regulator, which is charged with enforcing competition, to open up all parts of the NHS to private health companies. The Lib Dems’ principal concern was to strengthen local and public accountability of health services, but the Bill seriously restricts openness, scrutiny and accountability to both the public and Parliament. It will lead to an NHS in which “commercial in confidence” is stamped on many of the most important decisions that are taken. I therefore say to the hon. Gentleman and his Lib Dem colleagues: this is not your policy, but it is being done in your name. The public will hold you—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I know that this debate is attracting a lot of emotion and generating a lot of heat, but will Members please try to speak through the Chair? I have been accused by both sides of doing many things in this debate, and I have not done any of them.

[John Healey]

I accept that correction, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me put it in these terms. The policy is not Liberal Democrat policy, but it is being done in their name, and the public will hold the Liberal Democrats responsible if they allow the Tories to do this to our NHS.