Baroness Featherstone (LD)

My Lords, Amendment 50 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Brinton. Its purpose is simple: when a public authority receives credible information that something seriously wrong is happening, it should have a duty to do something about it. That may sound obvious, but we know from some of the worst scandals of recent years that this does not always happen. In fact, it rarely happens. In the infected blood scandal, the Post Office scandal and failures surrounding Jimmy Savile there were warnings, concerns and evidence that things were going badly wrong. Yet time and again, opportunities to investigate and act were missed. Very often the problem was not that nobody knew but that people who knew or should have known failed to do anything effective about it. Sometimes concerns were dismissed, sometimes they were passed from one person to another and sometimes the reputation of the institution seemed to matter more than the people being harmed. This amendment is intended to address that problem. It would require public authorities to take reasonable steps to ensure that credible information about serious wrongdoing, systemic failure or a continuing risk of harm is properly considered, investigated where appropriate and acted upon. The amendment would also make it clear that those responsible for the management or governance of an authority have a responsibility to see that this actually happens. Obviously, I am not suggesting that every complaint should automatically trigger a major investigation or that every allegation should be treated as proven. The amendment deliberately refers to “reasonable steps” and to investigation “where appropriate”. But we need to get away from a situation where serious warnings—indeed, multiple warnings—can be ignored, buried or simply passed around until everyone assumes they are somebody else’s responsibility.