Northern Ireland minister aims for duty of candour

Alliance assembly member Paula Bradshaw said there was “sheer frustration” that seven years on from the Hyponatraemia Inquiry “we are no further forward”.

The 14-year long inquiry examined the deaths of five children in Northern Ireland.

It was heavily critical of a health service it deemed to be “self-regulating and unmonitored”.

The Alliance Party said its motion did not reference “criminal sanctions” as it believed further discussion needed to take place on that issue.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has said the concept of criminal sanctions is unworkable, adding that the Department of Health got it wrong when it linked sanctions with duty of candour in the same sentence in a 2021 consultation.

DUP assembly member Diane Dodds said it was difficult to see how a duty of candour could work in practice, given the level of risk that healthcare workers face on a daily basis.

She said modern medicine was highly complex, with a huge degree of risk and that not every procedure would have a successful outcome.

Her party colleague Paul Frew said that if the Department of Health did not introduce an individual duty of candour, he would bring a private members’ bill to the assembly aimed at making it law.

Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan said a duty of candour with criminal sanctions was not about punishing individual healthcare staff who make genuine mistakes, but was about “ensuring there is a culture of transparency” and tackling any “culture of cover-up”.