Health and Social Care Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

I will finish answering the hon. Gentleman before letting him intervene again. The safeguard structure will be stronger, because commissioners must ensure, for example, that they meet their duty of continuous improvement of quality, their duty of safety and their duty of integration of services and other duties, including a duty to promote patient choice—but of course they have to balance those duties. Whether they extend ““any qualified provider”” is a matter of judgment. If they took the view that the extension of patient choice would be inimical to the integration of services and the improvement of quality, they would not go ahead with it. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues should recall that they have put in an NHS constitutional right for patients to exercise choice, so if the commissioners think it is possible to promote choice and improve quality by extending the any qualified provider remit, they can do it, but the Bill is not what enables it. It is therefore curious that the Bill should be attacked on that basis.