NHS Risk Register

Steve Brine Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I have sat in my place for a long time, and I must say that I find today’s debate deeply troubling in many respects. It is troubling because I dread to think what some people watching our debate must think. It is troubling because, as many of my hon. Friends have said, we are once again not really discussing the principles of the Health and Social Care Bill or what it will mean on the ground in constituencies such as mine. It is troubling, above all, because this Opposition day debate—I note it has fallen rather flat yet again—is not about the NHS. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) said, it is about politics and about the latest, almost embarrassing, bandwagon rolling out of what used to be new Labour. Today’s Opposition day debate was clearly a Trojan horse for other issues; Labour has been successful in that respect. As has already been said this afternoon—and I suspect that it will be said again—the last Labour Government never routinely released risk registers. I enjoyed the analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood, who demolished Labour’s argument earlier.

I am a member of the Justice Select Committee and Members will be aware that this week we began an inquiry into the Freedom of Information Act. The key things I want to understand from that inquiry are whether the shadow Health Secretary was right to refuse freedom of information requests during his time, and what some of the key people involved in the political birth of this Act think of it now. As luck would have it, I have some primary source material, so let us reflect on it.

There is a longer quote, but I will not spoil someone else’s thunder. I will cite what Tony Blair said in his autobiography:

“Freedom of Information. Three harmless words…I quake at the imbecility of it.”

Now, far be it for me to disagree with a former Prime Minister, but that is putting it a little strongly, in my opinion. I do not share his views, but they are, by any standards, astonishingly candid words. He went on:

“I used to say…to any civil servant who would listen: Where was Sir Humphrey when I needed him? We had legislated in the first throes of power. How could you, knowing what you know have allowed us to do such a thing so utterly undermining of sensible government?”

Well, Mr Blair should not have been so hard on himself. He built in safeguards to protect against the very undermining of sensible government—the sensible government that so concerns him now—and I believe that that is the issue we are discussing today.

Were the last Government, and the present coalition Government, right to refuse FOI risk register requests? Let me turn to the wise words of the former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, who, when, speaking to the BBC earlier this month, said:

“The problem we face with the way FOI is working is it’s driving stuff underground or into non-FOI-able routes, as the jargon has it. You just don't know when you write something down whether that is eventually going to be decided by a tribunal of people who may have never worked in government whether or not that should be released.”

When asked if he could provide an example of the way in which the Freedom of Information Act was preventing proper discussion between Ministers and civil servants, he cited—yes, you guessed it—the topical example of the calls being made for the publication of Government risk registers, and the dangers, as he saw them, that it would have for contingency planning in the case of a nuclear Iran, when the Government might consider options which, if made public, would undoubtedly provoke an overreaction on the part of the media and the public. It could be said that today’s call from the Opposition is deeply irresponsible.

Is the coalition arguing for secret government, or is this yet another example of the devil having the best tunes, and of our not allowing the facts to get in the way of the myth? The present Government are committed to transparency, and are publishing more information than has ever been published before to help patients to make the right choices about their care. That is at the heart of the Health and Social Care Bill. Governments of all political stripes have recognised that risk registers are specific policy tools that present risks in “worst-case scenario” terms. Releasing such documents would damage the ability of Ministers to receive accurate advice, it would mislead public debate, and be detrimental to the public interest.

Many Members have referred to myths surrounding the Bill, and I have no time to go into some of them now, but let me just say that the myth that annoys and upsets me most as a new Member is that perpetuated by Opposition Members that only they care about the national health service, that only they have ever used the national health service, and that Government Members have no idea about it. Let me, in the words of the Prime Minister, bust that myth. I care deeply about the national health service, and—in the words of the Deputy Prime Minister himself—if I thought for one minute that the Bill would damage the national health service or lead to its privatisation, I would not be supporting the Government, let alone the Bill.