Gosport Independent Panel: Publication of Report

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord makes two excellent suggestions. His suggestion about whether cover-ups should count as serious professional misconduct will be something the regulators will want to consider, as is better training on the use and prescription of opioids. We have made some progress in recent years. The freedom to speak up guardians are in place, and we talked about the learning from deaths programme. There is also the duty of candour. They are clearly steps forward but the panel has exposed that we are still not there yet. The suggestions the noble Lord makes are good and serious and we will want to consider them.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I had ministerial responsibility for this area in 2002 and the beginning of 2003, which is reported in the report. First, I associate myself with the Minister’s remarks, his commendation of Bishop James and his panel and the apology that has been given. Reading this report, the question I think about is whether, if those circumstances arose now, the response would be very much different. I am not at all sure it would. First, the report shows the reluctance at local level to have what it saw as interference from the centre in causing inquiries to take place. Secondly, while the police investigations were going on the other inquiries felt they could do nothing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said. Thirdly, once the police investigation had been completed and the decision that no prosecutions would take place had been taken, there was an agonised debate within the coronial system about whether inquests would be appropriate. The real issue seemed to be resources. The local coroner’s office did not feel that it had the resources to conduct the inquests and if it did so it would undermine the rest of its important work. In the work now being undertaken, will a real effort be made to grip the issue of the deadening impact of police investigations in stopping us learning lessons immediately? Is the Minister confident that the changes in the coronial system will prevent the kind of unseemly debate that prevented inquests taking place for some time occurring in future?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I thank the noble Lord for associating himself with that apology. He asked the right question. It was very well put. If the circumstances arose now, would the response be different? I think there is reason to believe it would be, for the reason I have set out—the improvements that successive Governments have made on patient safety—but we should not be complacent. We cannot assume that those things are enough. I hope they are an improvement. We believe they are an improvement, but we need to ask ourselves that very difficult question about whether they would be enough. That is what we will be doing through this process.

Resources are one of the issues. We need to make sure not only that there is clarity about the circumstances under which the different bodies can carry out inquiries without impinging upon inquiries by other bodies, but that they feel that they are capable of doing so. That is one of the things we are going to need to investigate.