Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. It is critical that the Government are clear as to how they will support and enable the voluntary and community sector to participate in ways that we know, from experience, is valuable to the National Health Service. In my previous intervention, I mentioned the three parts of the DH which the Minister referred to as levers. It is important that he is clear with the House that those parts of the Department of Health will remain, and that the financial contribution put into the fund will continue in order to support the capacity building and the ability of the voluntary sector to put in bids. The problem is that the Government's rhetoric has not so far been followed through in action. I take, for example, the work programme, which came not from the Department of Health but from the Department for Work and Pensions. Serious commitment was given in the House that significant parts of the work programme would be contracted to the voluntary sector. This simply has not happened. In most of it, the voluntary sector was a very lowly partner. I must say that the organisation I am involved with in the north-east, which is now the largest voluntary organisation in the north-east, is a lowly partner with others in the work programme. We have not signed anything, because we cannot afford to go into it unless we get more than what is left after everyone else has taken their cut, because we are at the bottom, committed to work with only the most disadvantaged, who are therefore the most difficult to get into work. It is six months later, and we are not yet anywhere near agreeing to go in with the other groups. We have to cover our costs. It is very important that the Government do not follow the same route in the health service. I know that that will be done locally, which the work programme was not, but it is very important. I also have experience through the voluntary organisation on negotiating on detox facilities and facilities for addicts. It has cost us an enormous amount to finally be allowed to provide the service. Because we are providing a unique service and no one else in the National Health Service in the region is following what is called the recovery method, rather than methadone and so on, we have decided that it is worth pursuing that. I must tell the Minister that, were we not such a large organisation, we would struggle. Were we not therefore so prepared to continue to work on it, it simply would not happen. It is vital that the Government give the voluntary sector much more reassurance than they have to date in these areas. Accepting my noble friend’s very good amendment would be one way to do that.