Ockenden Review

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

On behalf of the Chamber, I thank my noble friend for his touching testimony. He is entirely right; there are two CCGs in the local area: the Telford and Wrekin CCG and the Shropshire CCG. They did exactly what they should have done in 2013, launching an investigation into the levels of service at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. It is not clear why the findings of that report turned out as they did; nor is it clear why other interventions, or potential interventions, by the CQC and other regulators did not get to the bottom of the problem. Those questions will be addressed in the second of Donna Ockenden’s reports, in 2021; there has not been time for them all to be addressed in the interim report, but there is much more to go into, and this is undoubtedly one of the important points she will need to address.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the GMC board. Nothing can excuse the repeated failures and the lack of compassion and kindness exposed by the review. What is so striking is the paragraph in the report that refers to the eight chief executives working in the trust over a period of 10 years and 10 chairs over 20 years —no wonder there is a leadership and governance issue in the trust. I ask the Minister: what on earth have NHS England, NHS Improvement and the CQC been doing? It seems that their interventions, which I suspect have been punitive in nature, have not provided the kind of support that is needed.

Does the Minister agree that we need a wholly new approach to this trust, which gives it high-level attention and provides stability in leadership—not a constant turnover because of an intervention by one or other of the many regulators that can do this—and above all, support from neighbouring services that can provide help? I suspect that this trust needs an awful lot of help to get out of this terrible situation.

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I completely take on board the noble Lord’s observations. It is true that Donna Ockenden’s report alludes to the failure by senior leadership to monitor and intervene where clearly there were problems. However, let us not confuse correlation with causation. This was not caused by a failure of senior leadership, but by a breakdown in the basic management systems and culture of the maternity services within the trust. That should have been addressed by the senior leadership, but it was not necessarily caused by them. I completely endorse the observation of the noble Lord that neighbouring trusts have an important role to play in checking in and benchmarking behaviours. That is a point made very clearly in the Ockenden report, and one that I hope they will step up to.