Health Bill [HL]

It will definitely include all the comparative information that the Care Quality Commission will be measuring. That is one of the parameters. The Thames Cancer Registry, for example, has a large amount of data and information that most cancer units in the NHS may wish to start taking ownership of and publishing. In the NHS, we collect large amounts of information. It does not have the ownership of the clinicians who are providing the services, and I want to close that loop. That is the purpose of the quality accounts. We need to make that culture thrive, and that is why I am slightly concerned that we should not surround that space area with the words of legislation. The future will be different. We should also have the opportunity to develop future indicators. I mentioned that we should start walking before we run. That is the purpose of the creation of the National Quality Board. I am delighted to say that with the regulators—Monitor, the CQC, or patient groups or clinicians at a national level—we could develop further indicators in the future that may fall into any of these three categories. They may fall within the category of the regulator or the category of quality improvements. Quality accounts are not only for secondary care providers. We have a lot of quality to measure when it comes to community services and primary care. We know that we are measuring the quality outcome framework in primary care, but there is a hell of a lot more that we can measure when it comes to providers outside and elsewhere. Research and teaching were brought up by the noble Lord, Lord Walton, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked a Question in the House about this earlier. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, also mentioned it. I agree that there is a very close link between innovation and quality. You can improve quality only if you are innovating. I sympathise, and I declare an interest. It would be reasonable to consult the service, as most of these indicators will be developed with the service. I do not see this process as a top-down approach. I will not just sit down in the department with many of my very bright Civil Service colleagues and decide what the indicators are. We need to consult the service to see whether there are indicators that will reflect innovation, and the uptake by patients of clinical trials may be one of those. We should never underestimate patients’ sources of obtaining knowledge. One of the challenges that clinicians have is the inaccurate information that patients have when they come to see clinicians as outpatients. Most of that could be through some of the PR blurb to which the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, referred. We want to be open and transparent to empower our patients in future, because most of us in this Room have exercised informed choice and that is where we need to head. I hope that I have reassured the noble Lord—