Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLuciana Berger
Main Page: Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)Department Debates - View all Luciana Berger's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberOf course it is the responsibility of individual employers to ensure that their staff are appropriately trained and competent to fulfil the responsibilities that we ask of them, but we have commissioned Health Education England, Skills for Health and Skills for Care to develop a learning disabilities core skills education and training framework, which sets out a tiered approach to that kind of training and how it needs to be improved.
This review should shame us all. If we reflect on Sir Stephen Bubb’s final reports from two years ago in 2016, following a report he wrote in 2014 when there had been no progress, we can see that he put forward 10 recommendations. We have seen little or no progress on any of those recommendations. One of them recommended the introduction of the commissioner for learning disabilities, and we need that to happen if we are to see real progress and change. Will the Minister now take that important recommendation forward?
The hon. Lady is right to raise that, but I will point out that we commissioned the review to examine the situation. We are not running away from our responsibilities; we are standing up and facing them. We are allowing them to be entirely transparent and out there in the public domain for people to judge. The deaths that the report covered come from the period starting July 2016, so they are historical, but it is important that they are examined. The hon. Lady is right to mention the issue of the commissioner, and I will look at that.