Health and Social Care Bill

Monitor would ask itself: is the arrangement we are looking at for, let us say, an A&E department that had no competition for miles around, anti-competitive? The answer might well be no, it is not. As I said earlier, the very fact that there is no competition to a service does not mean that it is anti-competitive. Monitor will make a judgment on whether the service is operating in the interests of patients. However, I think that we are getting into an area where it would be beneficial to have a letter from me setting out exactly how the law is applied and by whom.