Prescription for fewer complaints against docs

The answer is simple. I wrote several months earlier and the information was not available at the time.

Last year, when I wrote, I told Mr Simpson's MP that before August 1999 the DSS did not keep records of complaints about BA doctors making inaccurate reports about their medical examinations.

This year the Permanent Secretary told him that there had been seven such complaints since August 1999.

The Permanent Secretary also told Mr Simpson that overall there were 3,929 complaints about BA doctors between December 1998 and November 1999.

Mr Simpson claims I refused to provide this information. Not true. In fact I was the first to release this information as part of the department's evidence to the House of Commons Social Security Select Committee last January.

The Permanent Secretary told Mr Simpson that the 3,925 complaints arose out of 914,868 medical examinations carried out in a 12-month period, pointing out that this is a complaint rate of four per thousand examinations.

I agree with Mr Simpson that the number of complaints is too high, which is why the Government has introduced tougher recruitment criteria, medical quality auditing and in-service training for BA doctors.

I confess that I have not read all Mr Simpson's letters of complaints, but in one that I have seen, dated August 1999, he said: "I have written more than 300, perhaps 400 letters... and a 126-page report to the Select Committee." It is not always clear what someone wants to know when they write several different letters about the same subject in the space of a week or a month.

If Mr Simpson looks at my evidence to the Select Committee he will see what I am doing to improve the quality and consistency of the medical advice given by BA doctors.

Hugh Bayley, MP,

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State,

Dept of Social Security,

Whitehall,

London.