Health Bill [HL]

I express my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for allowing us to up sticks slightly early on Monday. It enabled me to retire early with a dose of self-medication, and I think I will be a bit more fit for battle today. I thank her for her kindness. Amendment 24 probes the meaning of the word ““patients””, which the Bill defines as the people who will be involved in the review of the constitution. It may seem pedantic to raise the issue, but I think it reflects what will in future years be regarded as one of the Government’s biggest mistakes—the myriad different ways in which they have approached public involvement in heath. Since they have been in power, we have had no fewer than four major reviews of patient involvement. Some of us have been involved in the discussions on CHCs, PALs, patient and public involvement and LINks. I suspect that the conclusion in years to come will be that for all the good intent behind it, patient involvement, and the strategic involvement of patients in policy-making and assessment of the NHS overall, has been weakened. We return time and again, in different health Bills, to the question of how one can most effectively and meaningfully involve patients in the development of the NHS, and how one can best enable groups of patients to go beyond their direct individual experience of the NHS and provide input that not only challenges clinicians but is valid in strategic terms. That is the motivation behind the amendment. The amendment widens the term ““patients””, to make it clear that we are talking not only about patients currently involved with the NHS but also patients who have previously been involved with the NHS. Quite often, people have had an engagement with the NHS, recovered, gone off and thought about what happened to them, then tried to put that into context, and then come back with some of the most valid and challenging proposals. Our amendment is perhaps not perfect, but the intent is to ask the Government how they intend to meaningfully capture the involvement of patients in the review of the constitution, and, in particular, how they intend not to lose the experience of those who might have been involved but are no longer active patients seeing clinicians. I beg to move.