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I was Minister of State at the Department of Health from 2015-16. I was thrilled to be there. My father was a family doctor from the very start of the NHS and my brother retired recently as

a hospital consultant. To work for the NHS as a Minister was a particular privilege for me, and I met many wonderful people. It was a highlight of my life in public service. But the NHS was

not without fault. In particular I worried that a sense of defensiveness under criticism remained embedded within it. This could make it difficult to investigate problems. So it was with a

heavy heart that I listened to last week’s news that Baroness Cumberlege would oversee an inquiry into three particular forms of medical treatment by the NHS. She found that “avoidable harm

including birth defects and chronic pain” had been suffered for many decades. This had been caused by failures in the health system to respond to patients’ worries, and the evidence of harm

in relation to an oral pregnancy drug, an anti-epilepsy drug, and the use of pelvic mesh. The stories of how patients were ignored, and how women were belittled by comments dismissing their

pain makes hard reading. The next day, police announced a deeper investigation into Shrewsbury’s maternity scandal. These events are not “accidents” — nor are they unique. This pandemic

provides the best opportunity we have had for many years to recognise both the NHS’s extraordinary worth to the nation, but also that it can improve. If that is to be the case then reform

will work best if it is handled openly and with wide consultation, as free from dogma as possible, with a focus as much upon outcomes as upon concept. The Commons Select Committee would be a

suitable body to oversee reform. Good luck with that unlikely proposition, you might say. But hear me out. The NHS which has been part of my life since I was born. I am not hostile to it.

An examination of the NHS must confront the question of how to combine the principle of being free at the point of delivery with innovation and recognition of what modern medical practice

can deliver. It will also be vital to overcome the instinctive resistance to criticism. We need to talk about this, very openly. I arrived as Minister in the aftermath of the Contaminated

Blood Scandal, which was described by the former Health Secretary David Owen as the worst ever NHS scandal. Thousands of haemophiliacs were treated in the 1970s/80s with blood products from

the US which led to their contracting HIV or hepatitis, and in the case of some 1,200 people, both. Fewer than 300 of those survive today. I and other MPs had raised the issue in Parliament

in search of apology, explanation and Inquiry. This eventually began after Theresa May agreed to it. That inquiry continues, and its evidence is harrowing. Haemophiliacs, often children,

were given “treatment” even after doctors suspected something was wrong. Treatment continued on an “experimental” basis in some hospitals, without the knowledge of the patients or their

families. When eventually it became clear that they had been infected, some were told in as callous and careless manner as can be imagined. I sat in for one evidence session where a man

described sitting in a room, with other boys, as the doctor pointed at each one individually, in relation to them contracting HIV, saying “you’ve got it”, or “you’ve not”. No counselling,

nothing. It was a death sentence, at the time. The NHS then went on an exercise to cover up. Documents were shredded and evidence lost, and calls for apology, inquiry and a right to be told

the truth were ignored by successive governments. That failure to hold those responsible to account, to deal with the matter openly, to challenge those who think themselves above criticism

has led to the scandals described above. The NHS is big enough, and good enough, to know what it does well, and what corners need to be cleared out. The nation should take this opportunity

to help it do so.