Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I have listened carefully to what the Minister has said. I am not totally astounded to hear his remarks and I am grateful for the generous way in which he made them. However, I also listened carefully to other people in this House, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I certainly cannot see why the Government cannot move on Amendment 244. It does not pre-empt in any way their decision-making on the Law Commission, Dilnot or anything else they want to write about in terms of their White Paper in the spring. The flavour of this debate is that we need to give some particular attention in this Bill to integration between health and social care. Requiring the Secretary of State specifically to deal with that issue in his annual report is a very good signal to be given to the outside world and, particularly, to the NHS. A number of people who have spoken today have suggested that that signal needs to be given. I was not expecting to get a lot of progress on Dilnot but I want to come back briefly to subsection (1) of the new clause to be inserted in the Bill under Amendment 260DA. I feel strongly that we need a duty of this kind on the Secretary of State to balance the equation with the NHS. I shall take advice from a lot of people outside this House on whether we should come back to this issue on Report. At the moment, my instincts are that we will want to but I want to hear what people outside this House in the sector have to say. But I certainly reserve the right to come back on that issue, which I am happy to discuss with the noble Earl further if he wishes to do so. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 244 withdrawn. Amendment 245 not moved. Clause 50 agreed. Clauses 51 and 52 agreed. Schedule 4 : Amendments of the National Health Service Act 2006 Schedule 4 : Amendments of the National Health Service Act 2006 Amendments 245ZA to 245C not moved. Amendment 246 Moved by