Ministry under fire for failing to complete job

By FRANCESCA MOLD

The Ministry of Health has been criticised for failing to lodge its final submissions at the cervical cancer inquiry in time for others to comment before hearings end this week.

For the past two weeks, the inquiry has been discussing final submissions from all parties, giving each the chance to comment on possible criticisms or to suggest recommendations the panel could make in its report.

But at the hearings in Gisborne yesterday, the ministry came under fire for supplying only the first part of its written submissions, despite the deadline passing at the end of last month.

Lawyers for the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, Hugh Rennie, QC, and Gaeline Phipps, said in a memorandum that the ministry had not provided an explanation or tried to obtain approval for its failure to provide full submissions.

The memo said it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was either disdainful of directions which applied to it or considered it could operate to a different set of rules of its own devising.

Another conclusion could be that the ministry intended to make an "end run" by lodging the balance of its submissions at a time when others could not respond, said the memo.

Mr Rennie and Ms Phipps described the lack of final submissions as a "failure of process" which was prejudicial to other parties.

It was also potentially prejudicial to the inquiry's own work.

Kim Murray, the lawyer for the ministry and the Health Funding Authority, said there were a number of ongoing issues it wanted to report to the inquiry about, including the development of standards.

He said that the ministry had no desire to extend the evidence and it was unlikely to file anything controversial in the second part of its submission.

Panel chairwoman Ailsa Duffy, QC, said she would accept the ministry's final version even if it was late because it was important that the organisation had the opportunity to address criticisms made throughout the inquiry.

She said the committee might have to circulate the ministry's second volume of submissions to other parties for comment at a later date.

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