Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister most sincerely. Apart from anything else, he has explained the BMA agreement far better than I did in my attempted few sentences. I hope that that has provided some reassurance to the House. I am grateful to him for explaining the problem with the wording in Amendments 10B and 11A, and I accept that he has assured us of the totality of the Secretary of State’s duties overall in relation to the two proposed subsections. I thank him for explaining, in relation to the other amendment in this group, that the mandate set by the Secretary of State is one to which the Commissioning Board must have regard. That was precisely why I was concerned about also having ““areas”” because the Commissioning Board will be contracting with GPs themselves for their clinical services, which is separate from the role of the clinical commissioning group. So I have a little nagging doubt and that is why I put this right at the front of the Bill. I am sure we are going to return to the word ““area”” as we work our way through the Bill. For the moment, however, I am grateful for the noble Earl’s explanations. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for what I think was a flash of brightness in the fog when he asked for a diagram that will set this out geographically for us. That will be most helpful.