Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for, as ever, a very courteous and thoughtful response to many of the issues which have been raised, in particular his response to Amendment 39 and his undertaking to reconsider ““have regard to the need to””, which appears to be a little bit of clumsy draftsmanship that would be unworthy of the Minister himself. The Minister raised a number of important issues, including that to which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred. We have now had a definition of ““health service”” which includes public health. That means that public health research could lie within some local authorities, because a significant amount of public health will be devolved to local authorities. While I was pleased to hear the Minister say today that those people moving from the National Health Service to local authorities for public health matters would retain National Health Service terms and conditions, the reality is that they will be working under a local authority aegis and that research would therefore be an issue for local authorities rather than Public Health England—or so I understand, but we will probe that later. On protecting funding, I was particularly grateful for the way in which my noble friend the Minister responded to the idea of ring-fencing. He spoke not of ring-fencing, but said that there had been an increase in budget. It would have been good if he could have made that comment. However, he did say that NIHR would remain a stand-alone organisation. That was news to me; I thought that it was going to move into other organisations. Quite frankly, that is good news. It has a reputation which demonstrates that research is very important and we can track how it is used and when. I thank the Minister for that. I apologise profusely to the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, for indicating that ““research”” meant the work that is coming out of universities and being translated for use at the bedside. She was quite right to remind us that ““research”” for the purposes of this Bill was all research, and that what should underpin all public policy, in the NHS or anywhere else, is research which gives you evidence to inform policy decisions. I thank her for that rebuke.