Tony Dorrian Workers Party Representative has called on the Minister for Health to implement a Statutory Duty of Candour for all Health and Social Care Organisations in Northern Ireland.

Mr Dorrian said over the past number of weeks and months we have seen the publication of a number of public inquiries,reports, and investigations in to the delivery of sub-standard and deliberate neglect and cruelty. In our health and social care services. This erodes public confidence in our health and social care systems some of these reports quite rightly places blame on those who deliberately abused patients and service users in their care. The fact that despite numerous recommendations from previous inquiries that a Statutory Duty of Candour be implemented through Legislation it is still not in place must be questioned, Northern Ireland is the only Region in the UK that has not introduced legislation that would place an obligation on our healthcare system to be transparent when things go wrong.

Every individual practitioner under their regulatory authority have a duty of candour, so why the reluctance by the health and social care authorities in introducing this legislation that would restore some confidence for those families and individuals who have had long and tortuous battles for transparency and accountability. The Workers Party have been calling for this legislation for years and we believe that in some cases individual practitioners have been scapegoated when it was really systemic failures that resulted in the delivery of substandard services.

Senior management have a responsibility to see that peer reviews are carried out responsibly and regularly and that there are sufficient staffing resources human and financial to deliver quality care. Patients and individual staff must be given full and transparent information and feedback when things go wrong and lessons learned from adverse events. In the meantime it is the duty of our political leadership to ensure that a duty of candour legislation is brought forward immediately. Patients and staff deserve nothing less it is time to stop the waste of public money that would be better spent on patient care and services because of the lack of candour and a obligation of transparency and accountability for systemic failures.