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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his point and for his kind words. My contention is that the problem with all these reforms is that they tend to unravel once there is an opportunity for not just Members of Parliament but health care professionals and the broader public properly to scrutinise them. Once people have the chance to consider the proposals in detail, there is an outcry such as that described by my hon. Friend. I have tried to understand the thinking behind the Government's changes and amendments. As I mentioned earlier, many of the changes fly in the face of the logic of the arguments originally made in Committee and when the Bill was first published. The obvious logical conundrum, if that is the term, can be seen in the fact that the original impact assessments, which were very comprehensive, said that it was essential to create a functioning market to gain the benefit of the reforms. A whole section of the impact study explained why ““market exit”” was fundamental to reforming the NHS. I heard what the Minister said earlier and I have read the Government's amendments, but I am not quite convinced—perhaps I am a bit of a cynic—that this is a real concession. If we follow the Government's logic, that makes the Bill as a package at best inconsistent and at worst it removes the possible benefits that Government Members may wish to promote in terms of the costs of any market system. Instead, we are subject to a strange system. The Secretary of State initially mentioned creating a level playing field to allow access for private health care firms as well as existing NHS and public providers. There are therefore some basic contradictions in the rationale behind some of the reforms, if there was any merit in the arguments initially.