Patient Safety

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that very harrowing issue. I hope I can reassure him by saying that we are progressively extending the changes we introduced to hospital inspections to inspections of general practice and adult social care settings. The new inspection regime is designed to be much tougher when it comes to identifying problems. It is never possible to identify all abuse in an inspection, which is why what I have announced today is so important: it is about the creation of a culture that tries to prevent such problems from arising in the first place.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and the work that the Secretary of State is doing. Mr Mufti, who was the medical director of Medway hospital under the last Government, raised serious concerns about the bullying of staff, which he feared was affecting the quality of care and patient safety. Will the new provisions address that problem?

[Mr Hunt]

That is exactly the intention. Following my conversation last week with Nigel Beverley, the chief executive of Medway, I think that the hospital is making good progress after going into special measures. However, it is important to recognise that while it is possible to change things externally, real culture change must come from inside. This is not a day on which we are announcing new targets or top-down initiatives. The Sign up to Safety campaign to be led by Sir David Dalton will be voluntary: hospitals must choose whether to sign up to it. I think that that will enable us to make more progress than we would make if we tried to do things in the old way.