Health and Social Care Act 2012: Risk Register

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

Referring to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, methinks the Lib Dems are trying to rewrite history. They underpin this dreadful change that the 2012 Act brought to the NHS and they bear responsibility for the shambles that it has caused. I am very confused by the approach of the Department of Health. It has berated the National Health Service for not being open and transparent; in fact, it published a league table of those who are good and those who are not good. The NHS bodies are required to publish risk registers, so why should it be different for the Minister’s own department?

[Earl Howe]

The Government of which the noble Lord was such a distinguished member took the same approach to risk registers. Of course, transparency is an important principle in health and care. It is important to drive up performance and expose institutional failure, and I believe there is a revolution taking place in the level of transparency and access to health and care information. I am sure we are agreed on that. The point that I sought to make earlier is that when it comes to policy-making within government, Ministers and civil servants are entitled to some safe space, so the principle of transparency has to be moderated to a certain extent. That is the balance that we have struck.