'Stafford Borough Council has let down the people of Mid Staffordshire'

The scrutiny committee of Stafford Borough Council has got no teeth and has let down the people of Mid Staffordshire, a public inquiry has heard.

Mr Roger Dobbing was giving evidence on the seventeenth day of the Public Inquiry of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

He started to attend meetings of the Stafford Borough Council overview and scrutiny committee (OSC) after his mother-in-law, Joan Giles, died at Stafford Hospital and he joined the campaigning group Cure the NHS.

He said: "The OSC - it has no teeth. It has let down the people of Mid Staffordshire, which elected it.

"The majority of the committee are elderly people. I can't say there's anything against elderly people, because I am of that age limit myself, sort of thing.

"But I think they -- like all of us, they have total respect for doctors, consultants and the nursing fraternity. And they don't feel that it is necessary to question the way that a hospital functions."

Mr Dobbing said members of the public were invited to attend meetings of the OSC but not to ask questions.

"You are told to keep quiet and not express any opinion at all," he said.

"You can express facial opinions from the back, towards thechair. But that doesn't mean anything."

He said that if they wanted members of the community to be involved, they should be permitted to speak.

There was a system for putting a question to the committee, but it had to be put in writing seven days in advance.

"That was far too restrictive," he said, "because what it meant was that that an incident that may have occurred over the weekend could not be addressed for another four weeks, minimum, by which time it had lost all relevance."

Mr Dobbing said he preferred the system now in place with the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust board meetings, which were once held in private but have been public since last November.

"We can now ask questions at intervals after several topics have been discussed, like products - like points have been discussed, and we're then invited to ask any questions that we have.

"And I think that - to get the public involved in that way should be adopted by the OSC as well.

"They want the public to be involved in these issues and these meetings and the way they operate, but how can that happen if the public aren't allowed to speak within the meeting?"

The inquiry chairman Robert Francis QC, asked if it was a problem if strong emotion gets in the way of a council committee getting on with its discussion.

"I think it would be appropriate for people, even if they are emotional, to raise issues so the committee are fully aware of what is going on within the community and those points can be addressed as they happened, not ata later date," said Mr Dobbing.

Mr Francis said: "I suppose it might be said that traditionally - and obviously tradition is there to be changed if it's not appropriate - but traditionally councils and maybe other democratically-elected bodies have worked on the principle that if you have an opinion as a member of the public you express it to your councillor, who then conveys that to a meeting. Do you think that as model doesn't work very well?"

"I don't think it does work because the councilors are elected by the community. They have a responsibily to the community, to look after their interests," said Mr Dobbing.

"The concept I see is that these councillors get elected and they then go into council sessions and that, and council committees, and the last thing on their mind then is looking after the people who have elected them. Especially on issues such as we have experienced in Mid Staffordshire."

He gave the example of a time he was in a committee meeting and one of the members, Stafford Northcote, picked up the day’s edition of the Express & Star and which included a report of the latest incident at Stafford Hospital and turned to Mr Dobbin and said: ‘Have you seen this?’

"But he never took time out to ask the question, of which he was entitled to, of the chief executive as to what - what about this report and what was happening in the hospital."

The seventeenth day of the Inquiry took place on Monday, December 6. It resumed on Tuesday December 7.