Labour ‘dismayed’ as Holyrood votes down ‘Milly’s Law’ proposals

New legislation to establish an independent patient safety commissioner for Scotland has been approved by MSPs, despite the Scottish Government failing to include a package of measures dubbed “Milly’s Law” in the Bill.

Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said she was “genuinely dismayed” by this, as she criticised First Minister Humza Yousaf.

She said it was “inexplicable” that he would “express his support for Milly’s Law in public, on the record, but that his government simply does not vote for it given the opportunity”.

She asked: “Was he even voting today? Or has he run away?”

Her comments came as MSPs passed the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill by 114 votes to zero.

But the Scottish Parliament rejected seven out of nine amendments from Labour, which would have established a package of measures known as Milly’s Law, named after Milly Main, the 10-year-old who died after contracting an infection while in remission from leukaemia, at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow.

Ms Baillie said she was “sorely disappointed” the changes were voted down by the SNP and Greens, adding: “This is a betrayal of the very people that this Bill was supposed to give voice to.”

She told MSPs: “Amendments Scottish Labour brought forward presented an opportunity to rest the balance between patients, whistleblowers, families and powerful public bodies.

“So I am genuinely dismayed the Scottish Government have not adopted the full package of amendments that make up Milly’s Law.

“These amendments could have ensured that bereaved families were very much at the heart of the response to disasters and public scandals within the Bill.”

The measures Labour had proposed would have placed a duty on the commissioner to advocate for the families of those patients affected by a major incident in relation to health care, including helping them get legal representation and bereavement support.

In addition the commissioner would also have been given a responsibility to hand a report into such a major incident to the chief constable of Police Scotland and the procurator fiscal.

While Ms Baillie said the Bill was still “a step in the right direction”, without such measures, she added, Labour could only support it “with regret because the SNP chose not to truly champion the rights of patients and defend their interests”.

However public health minister Jenni Minto said the creation of a patient safety commissioner would “go a considerable way to making health care safer for us all”.

She added that the new commissioner would have statutory powers and be “entirely independent of government and the NHS”.

Whoever is appointed to the role will be “completely free to consider any issue relating to the safety of health care in Scotland”, the minister added.

And she said they they would be “directly accessible to patients, their families and the wider public to listen to their stories and concerns”.

Tories, meanwhile, said the new commissioner must be appointed “at pace”, with public health spokeswoman Tess White saying: “We cannot have a repeat of the recruitment of the women’s health champion which was repeatedly promised but belatedly delivered by the minister and her predecessor.”

But Ms White said: “At a time when the NHS is in crisis under this SNP/Green Government and capacity is at breaking point, an independent patienty safety advocate is particularly welcome.”