Barclay: 'Staff who refuse to give evidence to deaths probe will be fined'

Steve Barclay told the Commons this afternoon that his department has asked the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch to launch a national investigation into mental health inpatient services, to commence in October when the organisation acquires new powers under the Health and Care Act.

It will investigate how providers learn from deaths, how young people are cared for in mental health inpatient settings, how out of area placements are handled, and how safe staffing models are developed.

A separate NHS England programme to improve inpatient safety is already ongoing. Mr Barclay’s announcement follows a series of high-profile scandals and concerns about mental health performance nationally.

He said: “I want to reassure this house that the new Health Services Investigation Body will have the teeth and work at speed. It will have the power to fine those who refuse to give evidence when they are required to do so.”

Meanwhile, Mr Barclay said the inquiry into around 2,000 deaths at Essex Partnership University Foundation Trust over the previous two decades has been given statutory status, two-and-a-half years after it was first announced.

It means staff will be required to give evidence under oath.

Earlier this year, the inquiry chair Geraldine Strathdee raised serious concerns about the ability of the then non-statutory inquiry to achieve its terms of reference.

She wrote to Mr Barclay asking him to convert the inquiry’s status, expressing her concerns that just 11 staff said they would provide oral evidence. Following the letter, at a Westminster Hall debate about the inquiry, several Essex MPs called for it to be made a statutory inquiry.

Mr Barclay said Dr Strathdee is stepping down from the chair role for personal reasons.

Dr Strathdee said in a statement: “I have taken the very difficult decision to hand over the role of chair. In my view the next stage of the inquiry’s work requires a chair who is available for the entire forward duration of a statutory Inquiry. Due to personal health reasons, I have decided with my family, that this cannot be me.”

Recurring failures already identified include serious concerns about patients’ sexual, physical, and mental safety, poor communication of patient choice and therapies, alongside “striking differences” in levels of compassion, use of restraints and attitudes of caregivers across the trust’s services.

Findings of a rapid review of data in mental health services, announced by the government in January, have also been made public. 

Recommendations from this included for trust leaders to prioritise spending time on wards regularly, including unannounced and “out of hours” visits, for every provider board to urgently review its membership and ensure they have sufficient skills to interpret data on mental health inpatient pathways, while NHSE, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Care Quality Commission were asked to help map the full range of mortality data in mental health trusts.

EPUT CEO Paul Scott said: “We remain committed to supporting the inquiry, whatever form it takes, now and in the future so that families, carers and service users receive the answers they rightly deserve.”