Health Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may ask the Minister a specific question on Amendment 26. Will the data that are collected to inform whether there has been any change be routinely or additionally collected? If it is routinely collected, it will be easy to generate a report every year. If the data are additional, collected over and above the routine data, then all the points which the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, made are pertinent. You will weigh the service down with collecting data whereas you want to weigh it down with providing care and preventing disease, with data collection as a secondary matter. I must declare an interest. As part of my role in looking at palliative care services in Wales, we have decided to pilot commissioning iWantGreatCare to produce a website which routinely collects data from patients and carers independently of the hospice and palliative care services. We will thereby have an independent rolling evaluation on which we can draw, with six very simple domains against which to make an assessment. As we have just been wrestling with this problem in Wales, I completely empathise with the principles behind the amendment. However, the crux is where the data to inform any kind of reporting and revision will come from.