Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I begin a very brief set of remarks by apologising to the House, and especially to my noble friend Lady Williams and to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for not having been here at the beginning of the debate. The reason is perhaps apposite and might help to calm down the noble Lord, Lord Peston; I was at an NHS clinic in Braintree at lunchtime. On the basis of this debate and looking at the amendment, I am with my noble friend Lord Mawhinney and a number of other noble Lords who have no objection to a preamble or general statement of principle. I will come back to that in a minute. However, if we need one, this amendment is not it, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said. There is a case for the Government looking at a possible preamble or broad statement of principle, partly because, in my judgment at least, the views that the noble Lords, Lord Peston and Lord Owen, expressed—which would lead me, if I believed that they were true, to refuse to support the Bill—have raised fears and concerns among a significant number of members of the public. If we can reassure them by a preamble or statement of principle at a proper time, we should do it. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern did us a service by going back to the founding statement in the 1946 Act. I say to the Labour Front Bench that it may need a bit of tweaking—I have not studied it in the way that my noble and learned friend has—but going back to the statement of principles on which the NHS was founded would give people that reassurance. For me as a Conservative, and no doubt for the Liberal Democrats as well, it would do a real service by assuring people that we are not about destroying the NHS but about making it better and more fully equipped to fulfil its initial objectives. I hope that my noble friend will look at what my noble and learned friend suggested.