04.05.16
MPs call for Southern Health CEO to resign
The leader of the troubled Southern Health NHS FT should resign, MPs said in a debate yesterday.
Luciana Berger MP, shadow minister for mental health, asked Alistair Burt MP, minister for community and social care, for an urgent statement on the safety of care and services provided by Southern Health after a CQC inspection found the trust had still failed to make improvements.
Mike Petter has now resigned as chair of the trust and is due to be replaced by the NHS Improvement-appointed Tim Smart.
Berger said that the scandal at Southern Health, where more than 1,000 patient deaths weren’t properly investigated, had happened “on the government’s watch”, saying: “If all those tragic incidents were the only signs of systemic failure, we should be angry, but there is a much bigger story of neglect and malpractice, which aggregates into a major scandal.”
She called for a guarantee from Burt that patients currently in the care of Southern Health are safe, for a full inquiry into Southern Health and for the resignation of Southern Health CEO Katrina Percy.
Suella Fernandes, Conservative MP for Fareham, also called for “serious changes in the leadership” at Southern Health.
Burt replied that MPs were “not actually debating the government’s failure to respond at all” and that ministers calling for management changes was “not an appropriate response.”
He said that Southern patients were safe because the CQC would close the trust down immediately if it felt that they weren’t, and that while he didn’t “rule out” a further inquiry, the priority at the moment was urgent action to improve the trust’s standards.
He also offered his “deep concern and apologies” to Southern Health patients and their families.
He said that the NHS is currently carrying out a review to understand why patients with learning disabilities have a higher rate of avoidable deaths than other patients, and to eliminate this inequality, in addition to the CQC’s review of patient deaths at acute, community and mental health trusts, and that the CQC was currently evaluating a new delivery plan from Southern Health.
Labour MP Paula Sheriff asked if the failures at Southern Health were a sign of “growing and unsustainable pressure” on mental health and learning disability services across the country, to which Burt replied that the government had already committed to more investment in mental health services.
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(Image: Luciana Berger (right) with shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander, c. Jonathan Brady from PA Archive/ Press Association Images)