NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 2:"Page 1, line 9, leave out ““services in a hospital”” and insert ““health services””" The noble Baroness said: I made the case for the amendment, which was well supported on all sides of the House, during Second Reading. There is no reason at all why any part of our health services should be excluded from the provisions, however we manage to amend them in the course of these proceedings. When we look at how health services work at the moment, we see increasingly that services that have formerly been in hospitals are now within primary and community care. We know that health services change very quickly and that what now takes place in hospitals may, in two, three, five or 10 years from now, take place in the community, in day care or in whatever kind of service there is. We all recognise that there may be a problem about general practitioners who, as contractors to the service, have a very different way of organising such things as insurance against liability for negligence. Nevertheless, we believe that those problems could in the longer term be sorted out; in the shorter term, we see no reason whatever why the rest of the health service should be excluded. We do not see why hospital services should not start, in the first instance—and as the scheme gets under way, in the longer term, why primary and community services should not be brought under the ambit of the Bill. We feel very strongly about this, as we believe that the provisions create a false dichotomy; there is such shifting ground here that it cannot be right simply to refer to hospital services. I beg to move.