Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I particularly welcome the amendments which are designed to strengthen the duty to reduce health inequalities between people and communities, the emphasis here being on inequalities not between ““the people of England””, but between individuals as well as groups. I draw attention to this because in 2008 the Department of Health drew up a policy on health inequalities, and I sat on the group which developed it. I was pleased when the document was published in June 2008 because it talked about the group that I am interested in, which is people with learning disabilities. I shall read out a short paragraph from the executive summary because it makes my point very nicely: "““Progress on health inequalities will be judged against how public services treat especially vulnerable groups. The recent Disability Rights Commission report made it clear that people with learning disabilities often receive a poorer level and quality of service from the NHS. If services and health outcomes are improving for people with learning disabilities, they are likely to be improving for other groups at risk of health inequalities””." The report goes into some detail about the importance of measuring the improvement in health inequalities for particularly vulnerable groups. That is a good measure to measure progress in the NHS.