Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I add my support to the patient involvement amendments and the HealthWatch amendments. Whose life is it anyway, if it is not the patients’? Patients can now be very much at risk, if they are not involved with doctors, through drugs available through the internet which are counterfeit medicine. I was at a meeting this afternoon and heard from a Minister that the Government had asked China for help, because it is a problem place, and the Chinese are now going to introduce the death penalty for people selling counterfeit medicine on the internet. That is a serious problem. Patients need to be involved; they need to have a voice; and they need to work together with everybody else concerned. Otherwise, they will feel left out and shunned, and that would not be a good thing.