The chief executive of Stafford Borough Council said the health overview and scrutiny committee did not have the resources to monitor the goings-on at Stafford Hospital.

Mr Ian Thompson, lead officer for the committee in 2005, was giving evidence to the Mid Staffordshire Public Inquiry into what systems contributed to the hospital’s failures between January 2005 and March 2009.

"You've spoken about your view that, at least to some extent, the committee's work was effective in monitoring the hospital but you accept that you, along with a number of other bodies, didn't spot very early on that things were going wrong," said the Inquiry chairman Robert Francis QC.

"Clearly, one of the things I have to be interested in is how the system, or a system, picks up early warning signs of things going wrong, so that they're stopped in their tracks, if it's possible.

"Do you consider with the unfortunate experience that's happened here that health scrutiny committees, or something like them, have a role to play in picking up early warnings signs, not the later ones, and, if so  how would you propose that they could do that?"

"Well, I thing it is very difficult for a health scrutiny committee, acting under the remit  - we've got the 2003 guidance - to fulfil that role, because it is totally reliant on information being supplied by the hospital," said Mr Thompson.

"So it has no power of  inspection or access to individual complaints.

"So I think if it was to have that role, then the powers for scrutiny would have to change quite considerably.

Mr Francis asked: "You do not see that locally-elected councillors are likely to be equipped to spot early warning signs of things going wrong in a hospital, or indeed elsewhere in the health service?"

"I don't think that was ever the intention of the author of this guidance," said Mr Thompson. "It was more this strategic overview, access to services, connecting up services, finding gaps. It's that type of analysis that, perhaps, overview and scrutiny was aimed at in the first place."

"If that's correct then it means that councillors have no role to play, as things are currently constituted, in any monitoring of the quality of the service,” said Mr Francis.

Mr Thompson replied: "Well, they would. Their involvement would be in the major decisions affecting a particular NHS service or a trust, and that would be perhaps the issue like with a total withdrawal of a service.  An important issue because it would inconvenience local people.

"They would have less access, less facilities locally, and that's the kind of issue that an overview and scrutiny, with democratic accountability, could have very serious input into."

Mr Francis asked: "So while the councillor might have a voice in whether there should be a stroke service, to take an example,  he has no voice in whether that's a terrible stroke service or a good one? That can't be right, can it?"

"He has some input into that," said Mr Thompson. "But I thought you were talking who actually does the monitoring of the hospital. And what I'm suggesting to you is that a small committee of councillors, with limited resources and backup officers, cannot do that role.

"We can't do the day-to-day monitoring, collecting the data, and all this sort of thing. That has to be done by other parties."

Mr Thompson was giving his evidence on Wednersday,  26 January. The hearing resumed on Thursday, 27 January.

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