Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Professor Peter Hutton
Professor Hutton has provided the Committee
with the following comments in relation to the evidence session
held on 26 June.
Question 20 (Chairman to Mr Richard Granger)
At the time of the e-mails mentioned, the National
Clinical Advisory Board (NCAB) had been set up to represent the
interests of all clinicians as the proper route for the entry
of clinical information and advice into the programme. There was
no need for any other plan. NCAB was never allowed to have input
into the contracting process and continually worried about the
fitness for purpose of what was being planned and negotiated.
Mr Granger has access to e-mails that I do no have so I cannot
comment on their content when taken out of context.
Question 24 (Sarah McCarthy-Fry to Sir Ian Carruthers
and Mr Richard Granger)
Sir Ian Carruthers and Mr Granger were asked
if the National Audit Office Report reflected their "reading
of the situation". I also gave evidence to the NAO but this
is not mentioned anywhere in the NAO Report. On 16 November 2004
I met with Mr Chris Shapcott, Mr Doug Neal and Mr Tom McDonald.
The NAO Report does not reflect the evidence I submitted.
Question 26 (Sarah McCarthy-Fry to Mr Richard
Granger)
Mr Granger emphasises patient engagement in
the latter part of his response as if it was a new initiative.
In fact, a Public Advisory Board chaired by Ms Marlene Winfield
was established in September 2003 to work in parallel with the
National Clinical Advisory Board. These two Boards worked together
to produce a specification for an NHS Care Record which was approved
by the NPfIT National Programme Board in November 2003. This was
not referred to in the NAO Report. Both these Boards were subsequently
disestablished by the NPfIT and replaced with the Care Record
Development Board.
Question 189 (Mr Richard Bacon to Dr Anthony Nowlan)
When compared with the contribution from Mr
Granger in question 26, he and Dr Nowlan are in agreement that
the Output Based Specification (OBS) was produced by the Design
Authority from extracting selected content from documents previously
produced by others. Although these documents were the work of
many people, they had not been produced for the purposes of the
NPfIT and there is no way in which they formed a "clinical
consultation" on the programme as a whole. There was never
any clinically based explanation or diagram produced for the National
Clinical Advisory Board or for the clinical community to see how
everything fitted together before the contracts were signed. Afterwards
it became clear from discussions with suppliers in early 2004
that what they had been contracted for would not deliver the NHS
Care Record as specified by the National Clinical Advisory Board.
Over two years after that date, the NHS Care Record is still not
in evidence.
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