Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Warner Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Lords Chamber

The issue here is whether that is sensible, given that the NHS Commissioning Board is a management body overseeing the National Health Service, where, in this system, you want to encourage staff to feel that they can report untoward incidents without any fear of repercussions. I would like to hear from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, how we will be assured of the independence of the process by which the reporting system and analysis are undertaken, and whether he considers that there might be ways in which it could be taken out of the umbrella of the NHS Commissioning Board. I, for one, would have thought that it might have a chilling effect on the willingness of NHS staff to report incidents in the future. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. As a Minister, I, too, had responsibility for the NPSA and I was responsible when we introduced the reporting system. It is easy to forget how difficult it was to secure agreement across the NHS to that reporting system. There was a great deal of nervousness about it and it has certainly taken time to build up the confidence, across the country, that ensures that most service providers are now engaged with reporting these incidents. If we put that reporting system under a powerful body that is responsible for commissioning, there is a real danger about maintaining the support for the level of reporting that we have achieved. There is a risk that, without a few more safeguards in the arrangements, we may see a dropping off in the reporting of those incidents. Providers will be nervous about how commissioners will interpret the reporting of those incidents. That is the nub of the issue. I think we have a real problem about how we can carry on building on the good work done by the NPSA on that reporting system and ensuring that we continue to give confidence to the NHS to report these incidents in the service of the greater good. I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say about protecting the gains that we have made so far in this area.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I speak in support of what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. There is real anxiety that people will be frightened to admit to and report errors, if they feel that that could threaten, in any way, the contracting of the service that they are working in. Who in the new system will be responsible for rolling out training that has come from the cataloguing and analysis of problems, and how will the lessons learnt in devolved nations be fed into the system for the UK as a whole. Indeed, how will lessons learnt in England be fed out to the devolved nations?