NHS Risk Register

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In view of the extensive interest in this debate, I have imposed a seven-minute limit on Back-Bench contributions. That limit is based on the premise of reasonable self-discipline being shown in terms of the length of the opening Front-Bench speeches.

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[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Has the right hon. Gentleman read the article in The Times today by Stephen Bubb, which says:

“When in government . . . Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary spoke of his vision for a preventive, people-centred NHS that would allow the maximum freedom for local innovation… And yet, to judge by the reaction that”

the Secretary of State’s

“Bill has provoked, one would think that a centralised, bureaucratic and too often inefficient NHS is politically sacred and permanently untouchable”?

[Interruption.] Is that the impression that the shadow Secretary of State is trying to create?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remind the House that there is a lot to get through, many Members wish to contribute, and interventions in any event should be brief.

[Andy Burnham]

I have never believed in a free market in the NHS. I did not believe it then and I do not believe it now. That is why I oppose the Bill that the hon. Lady supports.

I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, that we say it is dangerous to reorganise the NHS at this time. On the day the White Paper was published, I stood opposite the Secretary of State and described his plans as

“a huge gamble with a national health service that is working well for patients.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 663.]

He never has explained why this successful NHS needs to be turned upside down. From day one we have asked the Government to be up front about the precise nature and scale of the risks that they are taking. Their failure to provide a full assessment of those risks to inform the House’s consideration of their Bill led my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), to initiate a freedom of information request for the transition risk register. I wish to point out that my right hon. Friend did not request the full departmental risk register, which was subject to a similar request in August 2009 at the height of the swine flu pandemic.

Let me now directly answer the question that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) asked. There are three crucial differences between that situation and the subject of today’s debate. The first important difference—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman would do well to listen, as the Prime Minister got his facts wrong at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

The first important difference is that the debate relates to a different document. This debate is about the transition risk register, not the strategic risk register held by the Department. They are different things. The transition risk register relates solely to the reorganisation and the effects that the reorganisation could have. That brings me to my second reason why the situation is different. I did not initiate the biggest ever top-down reorganisation of the NHS. It is the policy of the hon. Gentleman’s Government to do that. We on the Labour Benches who care about the NHS have a right to know what damage that reorganisation might cause. The Government are not just launching the biggest ever reorganisation; they are doing it at a time of the biggest ever financial challenge in the history of the NHS.

The third reason—

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I make it clear to Back Benchers that the shadow Secretary of State is clearly not giving way at present, and that in the circumstances they should exercise some self-restraint?

[Andy Burnham]

They do not want to listen because it does not suit their argument. This was meant to be their whole reason today, and we heard it from the Prime Minister earlier, but now they do not want to hear the reasons.

The third reason this situation is different from the one in August 2009 is that at that time there was not a precise ruling from the Information Commissioner, but there is a clear ruling from the commissioner in this case. Those are three important differences. Let me remind the House of that ruling. It stated:

“The Commissioner finds that there is very strong public interest in disclosure of the information, given the significant change to the structure of the health service the government’s policies on the modernisation will bring.”

That is where one of the Government’s key arguments for withholding the register falls apart. The Minister in another place has repeatedly defended the Government’s action by saying that they had published a full impact assessment for the Bill—[Interruption.] “It’s true”, says the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns). Let me answer that point. Having had sight of the impact assessment and the transition risk register, the commissioner said that

“disclosure would go somewhat further in helping the public to better understand the risks associated with the modernisation of the NHS than any information that has previously been published.”

In other words, the impact assessment that the Secretary of State has published is not good enough and the public deserve to know the full truth about his reorganisation.

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[Andy Burnham]

I quoted from the policy, but the Secretary of State is not publishing the risk register—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry to have to interrupt, but I must say to the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who no doubt is an immensely brilliant individual, that in her capacity as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State, at this stage in her career her role is to fetch and carry notes and nod in the right places, not to conduct a running commentary on the debate. I trust that she will now exercise a self-denying ordinance for the remainder of the debate.

[Andy Burnham]

As I was saying, the Government clearly are not following the statement of policy set out on the Treasury website, but the strange thing, as the House will hear shortly, is that NHS bodies across the country at local and regional level are following the policy closely. As I understand it, the Treasury’s theory is that the more widely the risks are understood and shared, the greater the ability to mitigate them. Indeed, I recall the Minister stating in a press release as recently as last October, the month before the commissioner’s ruling, that an open and transparent NHS would be a safer NHS. Two simple questions follow: why is the Department for Health not following stated Government policy and what it said in October was its own policy; and is the Department in breach of Government policy, or has it secured an exemption from it? I hope that the Health Secretary will shed light on this point today, because at present it does not look too good.

Let me turn to the Government’s other reasons for fighting publication. First, it is claimed that disclosure would

“jeopardise the success of the policy”

That is a moot point. The Information Commissioner said that it is a strange defence, given the Government’s other statements on openness and scrutiny building more robust plans. Secondly, it is claimed that it could have a chilling effect and that officials would be less frank in future. Given that risk assessment is a core part of all public servants’ responsibilities, not an optional activity, that claim was not accepted by the commissioner. Thirdly, it is claimed that the names of junior officials could be disclosed, but the commissioner has said that he was satisfied that the register would identify only senior civil service or senior NHS officials.

Fourthly, it is claimed that disclosure would set a difficult precedent and could lead to the publication in future of information relating to national security. The weakness of this argument, as the commissioner pointed out, is that a precedent has already been set, and it was set by the Labour party when we were last in government. A comparable risk register linked to the specific implications of a particular policy—the Heathrow third runway—was released by the previous Government in March 2009 following a ruling by the Information Commissioner on a request from the current Transport Secretary. Why are this Government not following the clear precedent set by the previous Government? That is the answer to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale. In truth, these four reasons seem to me to be the desperate defences of a desperate Government who have something to hide and a desperate Secretary of State.

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[Steve McCabe]

Off the top of my head. I can check the figure, because the Secretary of State wants to be accurate, but I think it is 36%—since he became Secretary of State. It is going up, and he must know that, because he was quite happy to cite other figures earlier.

The money should be spent on reducing waiting times; it should not be withheld by the SHAs to cover the cost of the reorganisation. The Minister of State says that that is not happening, but his own operating framework shows perfectly well that that is exactly what the money is being withheld for. It is spelt out in black and white in his own documents, and that is what is wrong at the moment.

The public feel that waiting times are rising, they have difficulty accessing GPs and they are worried about the confusion surrounding the measure. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said earlier, in some parts of the country it is already destabilising the NHS, but what we have today is the Government dismissing all those arguments while hiding behind a cloak, saying, “Everything’s going to be okay, but we’re not going to tell you the facts of the matter.” It is disgraceful, and the Secretary of State knows perfectly well that during the years that he spent in opposition he would never have tolerated such behaviour. His behaviour since taking office has been to undermine the NHS and to waste every bit of political capital that the Tory party accumulated during its years in opposition.

That is what is fundamentally wrong with the measure. It does not matter how many times people try to deal with the minutiae of the risk register; the reality is that the report is there and the information is there. There is only one person hiding it, and he is sitting opposite me on the Government Front Bench at the moment. That is what the public know. This is no longer an argument confined to what happens in this Chamber; it has gone way beyond that. It has got to the stage where the Secretary of State’s credibility is on the line, and I am afraid that it has been lost.

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The winding-up speeches will begin at 6.38 pm.