NHS Shared Business Services Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)Department Debates - View all Meg Hillier's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(7 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased that the Secretary of State at least acknowledges that this was incompetent but, crucially, does this not run deeper? Problems were first raised in January 2014, and then again internally by an administrator in June 2015. He found out, as Secretary of State for Health, only in March last year, and the Public Accounts Committee found out and was able to look at this only in September, because information was released on the final day that Parliament sat last summer. He talks about transparency, but does he not think there are deeper lessons to be learned here not only about transparency but about how the NHS supports whistleblowers?
Mr Hunt
There are two big lessons that we need to learn. First, why did the company have no internal systems in place to deal with the fact that from 2011 the mail was building up into a backlog? According to the NAO report, the situation was not escalated to the chief executive’s level until the end of 2015. That is wholly unacceptable. Secondly, it is also unacceptable that we did not have the assurance systems in place that would have allowed us to know that a backlog was building up. That is why it is so important that lessons are learned.