07.10.13
Burnham threatens to sue Hunt over ‘cover-up’ CQC claims
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham is considering taking the “extraordinary step” of suing Jeremy Hunt, who he says has crossed the line with comments accusing him of a cover-up when he was in office.
The health secretary referred on social media to Burnham’s “attempts to cover up failing hospitals" following the release of CQC emails under FoI laws, which he said showed Labour trying to stop the regulator publicly revealing information about failings at Basildon University Hospital.
The CQC decided then that “given the political environment”, its report on care standards should be “largely positive”.
Burnham has written a blog for Labour List blog titled ‘Why I’m considering legal action against Jeremy Hunt’, in which he says: “On Friday afternoon, the Secretary of State for Health sent out the following tweet: ‘Shocking revelations on @andyburnhammp’s attempts to cover-up failing hospitals.’
“This is an extremely serious allegation to be made by anybody. But it is all the more serious when it comes from a serving Secretary of State against a predecessor. It needs to be considered in the context of a series of events that started with my arrival in the Department of Health in June 2009 in the aftermath of the initial revelations of failures at Stafford Hospital.”
After setting out the context, Burnham turns to the CQC emails and says: “The pertinent parts are paragraphs 10 and 11. They relate to a media briefing from the CQC press office given without the authorisation of the CQC leadership. The release of information about any hospital failure is a serious matter. It needs to be handled in a considered manner and according to an agreed process.
“This did not happen in the case of Basildon. The email from CQC specifically states that it had ‘broken CQC/DH rules’. The next sentence correctly summarises how I felt about that breach of normal process. It goes on to say that the Department, on my instruction, ordered CQC and Monitor to issue a joint press release later that day in the proper manner. There was never any question of information being withheld.
Following this, at my own instigation, I made a full statement to the House of Commons on Basildon at the first opportunity. I promised to update the House on the hospital at regular intervals, which I subsequently did.
“It is simply not possible to consider the CQC email, and my actions in the days that followed, as proof of “attempts to cover-up”. That is why I believe Jeremy Hunt’s tweet crosses a line. It is an unfounded attack on my integrity and I am not prepared to let it go.”
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “Labour ministers wanted the NHS to be a good news factory and these emails showed that they were prepared to lean on a regulator not to publish a report about poor care in a hospital.”
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