Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

What I would say is that the CHCs were operating very well when we left office and they continued to work well during the first few years of the Labour Government. That is why there was such widespread opposition to the Government scrapping them when they did. A lot of expertise in CHCs was lost at that time, which is why the patients forums got off to a very bad start. Once established, patients forums were not provided with the administrative support that they needed, which compounded the original error. As a result, the turnover of membership has been high. Meanwhile, the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health has cost more than £120 million to set up and run over the last four years and will cost even more to abolish, whereas CHCs did not require such a costly body to oversee their work. One of my concerns is that the hard work and expertise contained within patients forums now risks being lost by a Government intent on replacing them with LINKs—a matter that one or two Members have already raised. The qualifications for individual membership of LINKs are not set out in the Bill, but left to the discretion of a host organisation. There can therefore be no reality to the Government’s claim that LINKs will build on the work of forums or that forum members are being encouraged to participate in the new arrangements. In particular, the specialist knowledge and skills of patients forums attached to such specialisms as mental health and ambulance services risk being lost—a terrible waste. The Government risk repeating the mistake that they made when they scrapped CHCs, for far too little of the expertise contained within them was transferred over to the patients forums. As a result, the patients forums did not get off to a good start; and the Government risk making the same mistake again.