Bernard Jenkin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), she could not answer the question of who would conduct independent safety investigations in the NHS after the abolition of HSSIB. She said that safety investigations would be conducted by the Care Quality Commission, but she could not actually claim that they would be independent; as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) demonstrated, they would not be. If, as it seems, it is intended that safety investigations should be carried out by the CQC unaffected by the transfer, why make the transfer at all? How much is this transfer going to cost? I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), is not in the House today. I rather suspect that she is more sympathetic to this argument than the Minister sitting on the Front Bench today. In our earlier exchanges we discovered and once again exposed how the safe space will be brutally compromised by the fact that it will be housed in a regulator with, inevitably, other ulterior motives. The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries. The EPUT—Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust—public inquiry, affecting my constituency, cost in its first year £5 million, and in its second year it is costing another £5 million. The whole budget for HSSIB was only £6.3 million a year, yet it does scores of investigations, not just one inquiry. The Ockenden inquiry cost £14 million. If we could save just a fraction of the cost of medical negligence, which is £3.6 billion a year, HSSIB would pay for itself.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Patient Safety Review · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. Only an independent investigator can find the causes of the incident that may be part of the culture or practice of that provider, or of the system as a whole. It is like suggesting that airlines or aircraft manufacturers can protect passenger safety without the independent accountability provided by the AAIB. Of course, providers should have the capacity and capability of conducting patient safety investigations, but they must know that HSSIB can and will look at that work and will hold them to account. Recommendation 3 also says that HSSIB should continue as what it calls “a centre of excellence for investigations” in the CQC, but I am afraid that this is just a sop. The CQC, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash, is a regulator and compliance enforcer, not an investigator. How can the CQC also be an independent investigator? Dash also says that the CQC internal successor should collaborate through the NQB to agree the scope of any investigations it carries out and agree the recommendations. Dash is effectively saying that CQC investigations will be overseen by the NQB. That is a direct attack on the independence of investigations. Can the Minister explain who in future will conduct independent and unconflicted investigations into safety incidents in the NHS? For example, how would an investigation under the CQC be free to find that the CQC inspections themselves were causing unintended harm to patients, or is it back to the misery of litigation through the courts and more public inquiries? The recommendation also makes no reference to the statutory safe space raised by the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) that provides for protected disclosure by patients and their families, clinicians and others in safety investigation bodies. It is a crucial safeguard, allowing people to speak. It allows for the duty of candour. I would just point out that the duty of candour does not work if it is just imposed on people. People cannot be forced to incriminate themselves. If placed under the CQC, confidence in the safe space investigations will collapse—and back we go to public inquiries. The Health Bill does attempt to address this by replicating the 2022 Act’s safe space provisions, but that Act also provided for disclosure in certain circumstances, which is allowed on the basis that the benefits for the safety of patients outweighs any impact on current and future investigations. But under this Bill, who will decide what protected information can be disclosed? How will the CQC give the same confidence that the safe space is not being compromised as HSSIB? Finally, Dash fails to look at the comparative cost of HSSIB investigations versus the cost of public inquiries. HSSIB at the moment only costs £6.3 million per year. To save money, the Secretary of State should request that HSSIB conducts far more investigations into matters which he thinks are important, provided that he also provides the funding for the necessary capacity. HSSIB, for example, has conducted eight investigations into mental health suicides since 2023. Each was completed in a few weeks or months, costing a total of £850,000. In comparison, the Lampard inquiry into the Essex partnership university trust in my constituency—investigating the same problem—is expected to cost more than £5 million. Ockenden cost £14 million. This is very far from the best use of resources for conducting investigations. So I ask the Minister, why have Dash and the Government ignored the whole question of HSSIB’s value for money? Even if HSSIB only saves a fraction of the £3.6 billion in costs of clinical negligence, it will pay for itself many fold. I do hope that Ministers will reconsider the whole issue, reflecting on the fact that none of the Royal colleges, nor any of the patient safety organisations, nor the all-party group on patient safety support this unjustifiable policy.