NHS Risk Register

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I once found myself in the happy circumstance of being in conversation with the former BBC director-general, Greg Dyke, who expounded on the lengths he had to go to in order to change the culture at the Beeb. He told me that one had to have a vision and show leadership, and that one could not be afraid to challenge the status quo. He then described how he was idly playing with the top drawer of his finance director’s desk while waiting for him to return to a meeting—he reassured me that this was absent-minded fumbling rather than a covert management technique—when the drawer happened to slide open to reveal a notepad emblazoned with the legend “Things that could go wrong!” Mr Dyke told me that he was puzzled at how differently that man’s mind worked from his own, but he knew that his ambitions for the corporation were more likely to be successful because his colleague—by himself, unlikely to set the world on fire—was thinking through the possibilities and consequences of his plans.

Vision, leadership and a preparedness to change are vital to improving the NHS, but reform plans must be subject to scrutiny and revision. This Government have welcomed debate on NHS reform because our motivation is to improve health care. We have not embarked upon this reform for its own sake. What a shame that some do not wish to debate, but rather to carp and criticise without offering anything constructive. It is a matter of regret that this debate is about the risk register. That decision should be in the hands of the tribunal. The commissioner has made a judgment and the Government have appealed, as anyone in their position would be entitled to do. I understand that the decision is being fast-tracked at the Government’s request. Good. That is the process, and I will be content with the outcome.

Apparently the Opposition support the Information Commissioner’s decision, so one assumes that they also support the process, which prompts one to ask why they have alighted on this subject for today’s debate. Why not instead set out a motion describing how they might improve the NHS? In choosing this motion the Opposition have ignored the long-term care of the elderly, the shocking amount of unmet need, the growing challenge of dementia and related conditions, opportunities to invest more in medical research and the clinical disengagement felt by many health care professionals. They have also ignored the Grey Pride campaign and the terrible divergence from National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines by NHS trusts that means that Members of this House, health care professionals and councillors have to write hundreds of letters of appeal in order to secure for patients the treatment “guaranteed” under the NHS constitution.

Do the Opposition have a vision to tackle those problems? No. For all they have said today, there has been no alternative vision and no constructive criticism—just a lot of opportunism, scaremongering and misinformation. What makes matters worse is that through all that bluster, the shadow health team know that less than two years ago the Government they supported were trying and failing to accomplish many of the things that the Health and Social Care Bill will bring about. During the Labour Administration I was a director of Diabetes UK—the largest patient organisation in Europe—and I worked with the Department of Health and people such as Professor Paul Corrigan, who was then based in Downing street. That is why I find the political opportunism on show today so nauseating. I hope it is in order, Madam Deputy Speaker, for me to suggest that the shadow health team have today invented and taken a new kind of “Hippocratic” oath.

However, for better or worse, we are still debating the risk register, so I will play ball and reluctantly turn away from issues that will actually impact on patients and health care workers across the nation and address myself to Labour’s lack of thought for the day. The risk register is an internal Department of Health document, the purpose of which is to enable Ministers robustly to test their ideas. Challenging and testing a Government’s ideas is part of the role of the civil service and, for obvious reasons, civil servants value the licence to be forthright that confidentiality bestows. One might have thought the Opposition could see the value of that approach, having had so many shocking ideas themselves, but perhaps it is because the Labour party no longer has any ideas that it is now so relaxed about the erosion of good civil service practices.

The risk register is a red herring. Its publication will add nothing to the scrutiny process, and could be detrimental to the good governance of this country. Today’s debate might have availed us of nothing so far as the improvement of the NHS is concerned, but we are now at least far better informed about the Opposition’s agenda—not that it took us six hours to learn that the Labour party has nothing to say. A casual glance at the motion tabled by the Opposition for today would have told us that.