Countess of Chester Hospital Inquiry

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I reinforce the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Allan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, about the importance of boards and patient safety being a key factor that they ought to take responsibility for. I will make a wider point. As health is a devolved matter and we are talking about the NHS in England, I urge the Minister to have comparisons of best practice: talk to the devolved Administrations, see what happens in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, both for the way in which we can learn from each other’s experiences but also so we can arrive at common standards that can be accepted across the United Kingdom. Similarly, if any registers are being set up, these should not be confined to just England but should be UK-wide.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness; that is a good point. We clearly need to be looking at best practice across the board. That is not limited to any one devolved authority, but means learning from each of them and, I think, somehow making sure that hopefully they can learn from the terrible events that have taken place here—so they are putting that in place as well. For me, one of the main failings that we are now putting right is the medical examiners, which I want to make sure are spread out across all the devolved authorities. Clearly it is up to them whether they take it or not, but we should absolutely be making sure that we are cross-fertilising some of those key learnings, so they go both ways.