[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow): ...  In October this year, the court will hand down sentences to the 11 members of staff who have pleaded guilty to maltreatment of patients at Winterbourne View hospital. There are no excuses and no mitigating circumstances. What happened was degrading, dehumanising and despicable. I understand that the Crown Prosecution Service will ask the judge to take into account the fact that these are disability hate crimes when determining the sentence of the defendants.]

Dr Julian Lewis: Can the Minister inform the House whether the people who behaved in such a sadistic way had, prior to recruitment, shown any evidence of tendencies of this sort? We would usually expect people who go into the caring professions to be empathetic, sympathetic and caring. How come people who gloried in sadism found themselves in such positions?

[Mr Burstow: That goes to the heart of a number of the points made in the serious case review about the nature of the recruitment processes that were used by Castlebeck and the way in which it then carried on inadequately to train, supervise and monitor the conduct of those staff. I will come back to some of the actions that the Government are taking in that regard to make it much more difficult for that to occur again in future.circumstances. ...]