Health Bill [HL]

I felt sure that we would be treated to an impressive and illuminating speech from the Minister in response to this amendment and so it has proved. For that, I thank him on behalf of the Committee. This has been an extremely good debate. However, I am left with one main question mark on a point to which many of us have returned: the burdens, which may, in practice, be placed on organisations. The Minister has indicated that this issue is live in the minds of many in the health service at the moment, and I am glad of that. However, another area I wanted to touch on was private-sector healthcare providers—particularly pharmacies, which have not been mentioned much so far. The Bill’s impact assessment anticipates the cost of data collection for quality accounts being zero. That prediction may be premature for pharmacies. Until they and we know precisely what the make-up of a quality account will be, we cannot tell whether the information currently collated in pharmacies is in the format in which it will need to be reported. As it is, the impact assessment estimates that the cost of analysis by a member of staff to produce the quality account in any given organisation will be between half a week and five weeks. The estimate that I have seen is that this will place a cost on the pharmacy market in England of around £20 million a year. That is a significant regulatory burden, and we must find ways of minimising it in a manner consistent with achieving the aims that the noble Lord has in mind. On a point of detail, although an important one, has the Minister considered whether it would be possible to give companies the option of publishing a quality account within the timescale of their annual reporting requirements rather than necessarily adhering to the April-to-March reporting period that has been specified for the NHS? That is only one point that has been raised with me. The Minister may care to answer it now; on the other hand, we could go over this outside the Committee or come back to it at a later stage. However, I wanted to flag it up with him. For now, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 33 withdrawn. Amendment 34 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List. Amendment 34A not moved.