NHS Risk Register

George Hollingbery Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I want to begin by challenging something that was said by the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), when he opened the debate. He has also shouted it several times from a sedentary position, and indeed he intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) a moment ago to make the same point. He keeps saying “It is a different register”.

Let me quote, at some length, what the right hon. Gentleman said earlier: “This led my predecessor”—the right hon. 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 2009”, which was, indeed, released by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Member for Leigh went on: “There are three crucial differences between the situation and the subject of today's debate. They would do well to listen because the Prime Minister got his facts wrong at Prime Minister's Question Time. The first important difference is that this relates to a different document. This debate is about the transition risk register, not the strategic risk register”.

I may have misinterpreted this, because it is not my key area, but let me refer briefly to the decision notice issued by the Information Commissioner. Paragraph 16 about the “Scope of the request” states:

“At the internal review stage the public authority referred to two separate risk registers which it said were relevant to the request and held by the department – the ‘risk register centred on the Health and Care Bill’ and the ‘strategic risk register'… For the avoidance of doubt, the Commissioner wishes to state that he agrees with the public authority…and that it is the strategic risk register which should properly be seen as falling within the scope of the request.”

In short, the document that is requested now, and the one that the right hon. Member for Leigh refused to release in 2009 are, as adjudged by the Information Commissioner, exactly the same document. The right hon. Gentleman may wish to refer to that later, and I am entirely happy for him to do so. If I have got it wrong, I am happy to be corrected.

[John Healey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way because, uncharacteristically, I think that he has got it wrong. The Information Commissioner’s notice considered two different freedom of information requests: one for the transition risk register from me, and one for the strategic departmental register from a journalist from the Evening Standard. The decision notice was a decision on both those registers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) is absolutely right: in our motion and the debate, we are talking about a different document—different in nature—from the one to which he referred and the one which was relevant in 2009.

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for clearing up part of this, but I think that the decision that was made by the Information Commissioner was on the strategic risk register and its release. No doubt we can discuss that later, but I am grateful to him for his intervention and for clearing that up.

More generally, we must consider whether the Bill has been properly assessed both in the House and outside by many people. There are 443 pages of closely worded analysis on the impact of the Bill, and the impact assessments cover every possible aspect imaginable, including risk management and the risks associated with the new Bill. That information has been in the public domain for many months, and I do not honestly believe that there is anything to be gained by issuing further risk registers that may scare a number of people about the things that they have to consider. The risk register would add very little. The answer, basically, is that it is an expedient hook on which to hang a debate: to raise again in the House a topic that has been raised a great many times—quite rightly, in many ways, as many amendments have been made to the Bill. However, the quality of speeches from the Opposition demonstrates to me at least that the point of the debate was not to discuss the risk register but to use it as a hook on which to hang a particular viewpoint.

It is well known that when the right hon. Member for Leigh was Secretary of State he refused to release the risk register. I have examined that, and I was going to quote him further at length, but the House has heard that quote several times today, so I will not trouble hon. Members with it again. The argument that he made then was a sensible one, and it remains sensible now. Do we really believe that it is good for the Government to make public all their plans for the management of every conceivable risk that they might encounter? Some of those risks will scare people rigid, and I do not honestly believe that that is the right use for the strategic risk register.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition should be careful about what they wish for in setting a precedent of publishing every single risk register? It may seem unlikely at the moment, but one day, they might be in government.

[George Hollingbery]

That is a fair point. As we have heard again today, Tony Blair says that he very much regrets parts of the Freedom of Information Act. We have all come to regret parts of the Act, and setting such a precedent could be awkward for the Opposition. When, inevitably, they return to power, they will find that equally difficult to manage.

If officials are inhibited in any way from having full and frank discussions with Ministers on challenging issues for the Government, that is a retrograde step, and we cannot afford to take it. I have no argument with the Information Commissioner, as it is his job to make assessments based on rational arguments made to him in the light of documents under review and, as he explained in his judgment, on the timing of the initial request. It is germane, however, to point out that in paragraph 29, the judgment discusses exactly the issues to which I have referred, and cites

“the ‘safe space’ and ‘chilling effect’ arguments which are well understood and have been considered in a number of cases before the Information Tribunal.”

In paragraph 35 the commissioner makes his judgment and states:

“The Commissioner finds that the factors are finely balanced in this case”.

It was not an open and shut case; he had to make a fine judgment. The Information Commissioner himself clearly found that a difficult decision to make.

As I have said, it is entirely right and proper that the Information Commissioner should make his judgment as he sees fit. That is what he is there for, but for my part, I believe that that is a dangerous precedent to set. We have to wait for the result of the Government’s appeal and any further iterations of the statutory process before we receive the final answer. I recognise the shadow Secretary of State’s challenge, asking why the Secretary of State would not simply acquiesce and open up the information to all. The simple answer is that there are very good reasons for not doing so, and I have just talked about those.

What of the Opposition’s plans for the national health service? Will the shadow Secretary of State publish the likely contents of the NHS risk register for and the relevant impact assessments of his own plans for the service? That might be tricky because, other than the fact that they want to cut the NHS budget, we have absolutely no idea of the Opposition’s plans, and, as far as I can tell, neither do they. I trawled the party’s website today and I could find literally nothing about Labour’s plans for the future of the NHS; as is the case in a great many policy areas for the Labour party, confusion seems to reign on the Labour Benches. At a time when there is an exponential increase in demand on NHS services and a huge increase in available treatments, and when money is in very short supply for the Government, the Opposition’s response, judging by today’s debate, is nothing, except what seems to me to be naked opportunism.

I shall offer a final thought. Perhaps political parties should also be forced to publish impact assessments and maintain risk registers on their internal musings at election time, in the interests of transparency. Had Labour had to do that in 1997, it would have been extraordinarily unlikely that the party would ever have been elected.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

It is good to follow the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), although he is wrong to say that this debate is simply a device for having a bigger debate. The motion is very simple and I had hoped that it would command wide support across this House, because this is not about being for or against the NHS Bill, or about being for or against the NHS reorganisation. The matter before us is whether we are for or against good government and the proper accountability of government to the public and to Parliament. A more open Government—a Government required to be more accountable—must raise their game and are more likely to be a better Government.

The Prime Minister said as much in the first month after the last election. He said that

“we’re going to rip off that cloak of”—

Government—

“secrecy and extend transparency as far and as wide as possible. By bringing information out into the open, you’ll be able to hold government and public services to account.”

Not for the first time, people are looking to the Prime Minister now to honour the promises he made, especially on the NHS. I have to say that 15 months after I made the original freedom of information request and 13 months after the Government introduced the NHS Bill, they are now dragging out the refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner in a way that prevents the public from getting a better understanding of the plans and prevents Parliament from doing our proper job of legislating well and legislating wisely.

[George Hollingbery]

rose—

[John Healey]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, as I have followed his speech.

[George Hollingbery]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman could provide the House with a single example of where, in the transition of a Bill, a risk register of this sort has been used to inform the House’s debate. He may well be able to do so, and I would be grateful if he could.

[John Healey]

There is the precedent of releasing a programme risk register connected with the third runway at Heathrow, but the principle of the Freedom of Information Act is that each case is different—every risk register is different. The reason why this case is important and exceptional and why the Information Commissioner has, on balance, required the Government to disclose rather than withhold the risk register is that the Government’s health reforms are the biggest ever reorganisation in NHS history; that the legislation is the longest in NHS history; and that it has been introduced at a time of unprecedented financial pressure.