NHS Risk Register

Karl Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Let me put a quotation to the shadow Secretary of State again:

“Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1192W.]

I asked in an intervention on the shadow Secretary of State whether he recalled that quotation. It is what he said in an answer to this House in Hansard on 23 March 2007.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

I will in a moment.

Frankly, this is a broken-bat debate in the first place, because the shadow Secretary of State is trying to suggest that this Government should do something that he as a Minister and then as a Secretary of State steadfastly refused to do, using exactly the same arguments that the present Government have used.

I am afraid that the shadow Secretary of State’s bat was broken before he came to the crease, because at Prime Minister’s questions the Prime Minister put it to the Leader of the Opposition that, as he was devoting a whole Opposition day to this debate, he might want to make some argument or put some question to him on this subject, but such a point from the Leader of the Opposition came there none. The shadow Secretary of State is standing at the Dispatch Box without the support of his own leader.

[Karl Turner]

Does the Secretary of State think that his job is at risk and that it should perhaps be on a risk register?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not know about the debate being bad-tempered, Mr Deputy Speaker, but we at least have jokers in the House.

The shadow Secretary of State is out on his own. I will be kind to him and say that at least opposition is coming naturally to him. Whatever we propose, he opposes it, even to the extent of directly contradicting what he and his colleagues said in government. His contribution today was another shameless example. We have seen this before. The last Opposition day debate on this subject was a travesty of his previous views about the role of the private sector, the need for the private finance initiative and the role of competition in the NHS that he espoused in government. He has done a U-turn on those matters and now holds the polar opposite views from those that he held before. That may be a luxury of opposition and he may enjoy it for the moment—actually, I am not sure that he did enjoy it that much—but that kind of inconsistency will keep him in opposition for a very long time.

The shadow Secretary of State spoke for about 50 minutes and I heard not a word of appreciation for the staff of the NHS. We are asking the staff of the NHS to live in financially challenging times, but it is not mission impossible. He said that saving money in the NHS was mission impossible. That is certainly how the Labour party treated it in government. Spending money was about the only thing that it seemed to be capable of doing, but it never spent it well. We are asking the staff of the NHS to save and to reinvest, and to improve performance at the same time.

Did I hear one scintilla of appreciation from the shadow Secretary of State for what NHS staff are doing, or for the fact that we have the lowest number of hospital-acquired infections on record and the lowest ever numbers of patients waiting more than six months and more than one year for treatment? I did not. I put it on record again that whether we compare May 2010 with December 2011, during which time the number of patients waiting more than a year for treatment more than halved, or December 2010 with December 2011, in which time it went down from more than 14,000 to nearly 9,000, the number has gone down. For the shadow Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that it has doubled, which is transparently wrong, is a misrepresentation to the House and a travesty to the staff of the service. He ought to come to the Dispatch Box and withdraw it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

Your predecessor in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, noted that this has been an intemperate debate, and so it has, reflecting a wider debate about the NHS that has become increasingly intemperate with every day that has passed. The reason is in large part the terrible myths, put about by the Opposition and their co-agitators in the health care unions, which we have heard again perpetuated in the leadership, and in the sponsor and proposer of the motion today.

As any demagogue will know, it is always difficult to present a travesty of the truth in a calm and reasonable voice, and that is precisely why the manner in which the Opposition have conducted this debate, and the entire debate about the NHS, belies the fact that they are interested not in a calm and reasonable debate, but merely in smearing the Government and in bringing into disrepute this long-needed reform of the NHS.

The inconsistency of the Opposition’s position is evident even in the motion, which asks for the Government to respect the decision of the Information Commissioner, yet that is based on an Act, the Freedom of Information Act, which the previous Government brought in, and on which I have to say the Conservative party was wrong. This is not just about the decision of the Information Commissioner; the Act describes a process that must be respected in its entirety. We are in the middle of a quasi-judicial tribunal, and it would have been right and respectful to the spirit of the Act if the Opposition had waited until the decision-making process was complete before making this point. Far from dragging it out, as the former shadow Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), claimed earlier, and as the current shadow Health Secretary says from a sedentary position, the Government have brought forward the tribunal date to expedite it. That is entirely consistent with the Government’s track record on transparency.

Yesterday, in the Justice Committee, we took evidence from Maurice Frankel, who is well known to Labour Members as a champion of freedom of information. He said that we as a Government are doing reasonably well, and that we are certainly ahead of Australia, Canada, the United States and Sweden. When the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), for whom I have great respect, asked how FOI in England and Wales compares with that in similar jurisdictions, Professor Hazell of the UCL constitution unit said that we compare very well and have a rather more generous regime than in Australia and Canada. We are now improving on that as a Government.

[Karl Turner]

Would the hon. Gentleman say that the question was put in relation to this particular issue? He is rather suggesting that it was, but it certainly was not.

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. I am trying to put in the round the position of this Government on freedom of information—that is, respecting the Act brought in by the previous Government in going through the necessary process, and in the meantime showing greater transparency in their dealings with the public than any previous Government. One need not look only at the transparency inherent in departmental business plans and departmental spending above £5,000. The risk registers quoted by the shadow Secretary of State, which he revealed with a flourish as though he were some latter-day Carl Bernstein, came from the websites of local PCTs and were revealed as a result of transparency initiatives by this Government. In their motion and in their attack on the Government, the Opposition have shown inconsistency that reveals their true intent.

The shadow Secretary of State repeatedly called into question the Government’s motivation for not releasing the risk register. Their motivation is precisely the same as that which drove him to refuse to release a risk register in 2009. In turn, I question his motivation for calling this debate and picking a fight on this matter. It is not, as the motion might suggest, to inform the public debate, but to fuel the misinformation campaign that has been the basis of the Opposition’s attack on the NHS reforms; to take out of context statements from a document that, by its very nature, considers risks rather than benefits; and to use that in an effort to undermine a programme of reform that has the support of increasing numbers of health care professionals in my constituency to whom I have spoken, and is showing real results.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I absolutely agree. The points that they are making today are just as confused and incoherent as the rest of their policies. They seem to just cut and paste their policy with some frequency to suit the bandwagon that they wish to jump on at a particular point.

[Karl Turner]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

I will continue, if I may.

The motion is something of a red herring, in that it does nothing to meet my constituents’ concerns about the delivery of health care. When I speak to them, it is quite obvious that they want choice about where they are treated and access to high-quality health services that can be provided locally. They want less management and bureaucracy in the NHS and more money to go to the front line.

My constituents certainly do not want to go back to the PCT-type commissioning that we had under the previous Government, because Nuneaton was completely disadvantaged under that system. Nuneaton is one of the most disadvantaged areas of Warwickshire and has one of the worst health inequalities. Despite that, NHS Warwickshire did not support Nuneaton and health funding dissipated elsewhere in the county. The huge PFI scheme in Coventry drained the life out of the Warwickshire health economy and caused a threat to constant service reorganisation, which could have caused the loss of A and E and maternity, and other women and children’s services, in the George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton.

We need to battle and fight against the problems that we encountered under the PCT, but at least under the new system, the local GP commissioning consortia are helping. They want to work with the George Eliot hospital and are making efforts to support and maintain those services in Nuneaton.