Health Bill [HL]

That was a useful debate. I must admit, in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that I have enjoyed many a happy hour discussing what the word ““guidance”” means. That is why I deliberately shied away from any suggestion that we might be talking about something that had equivalence with statutory guidance. The noble Baroness knows the status of that, as do many other noble Lords. There is something missing from this whole exercise if the document that most clearly sets out for patients and for staff what this is all meant to mean in practice—and we should bear in mind that there is a big section about staff—is unconnected from a constitution that the Government have decided should be based in law, but can have some kind of legislative force without it. I am not sure that I fully accept what the Minister says about the difficulty of updating it all, and so on; in so far as it is a document that reflects existing law and policy elsewhere, it consists largely of things that the NHS ought to make clear to its users. There is an argument, at least in my mind, that to do all that updating in the form of one document might be a more efficient way in which to go about managing relationships with staff and users. I have listened to what the Minister said. I shall take it away and reflect on it, but I may well come back to it if, on reflection, I think that this is the most efficient way in which to keep this updated. On the matter of Switzerland, I cannot answer the question with full certainty, but I shall have a guess. I am sure that Switzerland is not there because of Dignitas; I am sure that it is listed because, for WHO purposes, Switzerland, which is not part of the European economic area is a health partner in many things. I may be wrong, but I wanted to show that I have doing my homework for tomorrow’s debate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 4 withdrawn. Amendments 5 and 6 not moved.