North East Ambulance Service

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that NHS England is doing work on workforce planning, which is crucial to ensuring that we have not just the right number of staff, but the right skills mix. I can also reassure him that performance in the ambulance service nationally has improved from March to April.

The ambulance service has been working under severe stress during the pandemic and in dealing with the ensuing backlog. We need to be mindful that although these are tragic events, the vast majority of ambulance staff are working extremely hard and caring for patients.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

This is an appalling scandal and tragedy. Unfortunately, it follows a whole series of events that everybody in this Chamber could name, from Morecambe Bay to Mid Staffs to Bristol. The Minister claims that the NHS is open and that it has a learning culture when genuine mistakes are made. That is good rhetoric, but I am afraid that it is not the reality. What will she do to make it a reality? Last week, The Economist estimated that 1% of all deaths in this country are down to mistakes in the NHS.

[Maria Caulfield]

As I have said to other hon. Members, mistakes are always going to happen; that is human nature. The difference is that we are trying to introduce a culture of openness and learning in the NHS so that staff feel confident in coming forward, and so that when a mistake does happen, lessons are learned to prevent it from happening again.

Let us look at the record of this Government. It is this Government who are introducing a commissioner to oversee patient safety across the NHS. It is this Government who have introduced a statutory duty of candour so that when mistakes happen, patients and their families are notified and the process of learning starts. It is this Government who have introduced an early notification system specific to maternity—