Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review

Debate between Kieran Mullan and Nadine Dorries

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I welcome the report and its wide-ranging recommendations, particularly those focused on a medical-devices registry and the need to improve our post-market surveillance of drugs and treatments in this country. However, I urge caution in respect of the risk of creating new posts and bureaucracy when we already have an extensive number of organisations—including the CQC, the ombudsman and Healthwatch—and hospitals themselves have a responsibility to listen to complainants, whatever the cause of their complaint might be. In my time at the Patients Association, we ran a survey of complainants across a number of hospitals to compare and pick up those hospitals that were not as good at listening as others. Does the Minister agree that, if all healthcare providers had to survey their complainants and we could compare how well providers were listening to them, we might see improvement on the frontline for patients, in respect of all different causes of complaint?

[Ms Dorries]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. It is a recurring theme—over and over again—that when patients complain, the first point of complaint is to the trust where they were treated, but that is often where the logjam is. A patient-safety campaigner told me recently that it was seven years before the chief executive of a trust would even acknowledge his complaint or meet him. That is where we see the logjam happening. I will take away my hon. Friend’s point and consider it, because it is a very important one.