Jeremy HuntOvjeren akaunt

Delighted to hear about Ken Clarke’s peerage, everyone’s favourite Parliamentarian. Many of us disagreed with him on Europe, but his wisdom and experience will make parliament a better place.

That’s because despite duty of candour & other reforms, it is still too hard for clinicians to be open about failures. People worry about litigation, being fired or struck off: we still do not distinguish clearly enough between ordinary human error & Paterson style recklessness.

The report acknowledged 'many areas of improvement in processes and procedures.' But it said regulators were more confident than frontline doctors that Paterson could not be repeated? Why?

But as report makes clear, for transparency to be effective at an individual surgeon level, data must be presented in a way that is clear to the public. A job for NCIP?The data it collects is confidential, but should a subset (eg no of operations in a particular field) be public?

Has the NHS got safer? Since the introduction of Ofsted-style ratings by the CQC there is much more transparency about poor care at an institutional level. 40 NHS trusts have been put into special measures (around a fifth) of which half have exited and 6 now have a good rating.

Nor should private providers get away with worse clinical governance than NHS trusts, especially when under contract to the NHS. Shocking that some of the Spire patients STILL don’t have a care plan. This makes me worry private sector care may currently be less safe than NHS care

The recommendations seem sensible and I hope the government adopts them all. In particular patients should not lose the right to compensation if their treatment counts as a criminal act. The MDU should be ashamed of itself for exploiting this loophole.

Bishop James has rightly avoided recommending more regulation as a central issue is why existing regulation failed. Instead he asks searching and uncomfortable questions about a 'culture of avoidance and denial.' Culture matters as much as rules if healthcare is to be safe.

I have now read in full the Bishop of Norwich's thoughtful report on rogue surgeon Ian Paterson, a report I commissioned in December 2017. It makes a harrowing read. Thread below.

Congrats to Steve Baker on this v. gracious speech. Time to set divisions aside, let wounds heal and come back together.https://twitter.com/SteveBakerHW/status/1222913757699084288 …

Today we can feel proud to live in one of the oldest and greatest democracies in the world: when the British people give an instruction, the British Government obeys. Happy Brexit day one and all.#BrexitDay

I’ll also focus on making faster progress on mental health & patient safety; recent maternity scandals show we can never be complacent. I look forward to working with my committee to provide a strong, independent voice that supports NHS staff & patients in a very pressured period

That is what I will be pressing for, because the NHS will continue to fall over every winter until we fix social care, risking both patient safety and staff morale.

For my last six months as Health Secretary, social care was formally added to my responsibilities but it was not long enough to bring forward reforms or - more crucially - a funding settlement for social care.

Over nearly a decade in frontline politics, the NHS has always been my greatest political passion, and I am honoured to have been elected Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee.