Health Bill [HL]

As noble Lords will recognise by the drafting, this is a probing amendment. I apologise for the deficiencies in the drafting. The amendment goes in part to the ground that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, opened up for us in a previous debate. The review of the constitution is laid out before us as a process or mechanism. There is not a great deal about the substance and objective of such a review. It is self-evident that it will be a process that is gone through to try to determine the extent to which those principles have been upheld. As somebody who, at least in part, makes their living from helping organisations to do evaluation processes, I could go on for some considerable time about how you evaluate principles. I am afraid that these days I charge a fee for that, so I will not. It is right for us to probe what the outcome of the review is meant to be. It is also right that we should identify this one particular area—that is, the review taking into account the extent to which the NHS Constitution has played a role in bringing together health and social care. I have a particular reason for saying that. It is possible that the NHS could achieve the aspirations, aims and goals that are set out in the constitution and handbook. It could do so at the expense of social care and it could do so at the expense of the resources that are devoted to social care. One fundamentally important part of this will be to evaluate the NHS on the extent to which it, in conjunction with others, achieves the aims and objectives set out before it in the constitution. Therefore, it is worth probing in the amendment—we know a bit about the process—what the intended outcome is going to be, and the extent to which this constitution and its implementation might act as a magnet for resources drawn from other areas of public services. I beg to move.