Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 287B. In his speech at the outset of today’s debate, the Minister said that there were four areas where he was considering amendments to Part 3, which deals with Monitor. If memory serves, he said there were areas where the Bill had not been completely amended to conform to the Future Forum report. This is a particular example of that. Clause 96, the supplementary conditions, says it is possible for Monitor to include conditions that require, "““the licence holder to do, or not to do, specified things or things of a specified description … within such period as may be specified in order to prevent anti-competitive behaviour in the provision of health care services for the purposes of the NHS””." Of course, that mirrors the duties of Monitor as set out in Clause 59, which says: "““Monitor must exercise its functions with a view to preventing anti-competitive behaviour””—" so far, so good. However, Monitor also has a duty to, "““exercise its functions with a view to enabling health care services provided for the purposes of the NHS to be provided in an integrated way where it considers that this would””" improve quality and so on. There is no mirror of that particular duty in the supplementary conditions in Clause 96, which is why this amendment adds the following wording: "““or for the purposes of encouraging the integration of services in the interest of people who use such services””." A number of other examples are the subjects of amendments as well and will no doubt come up in the course of the Bill. It seems to me that the equal and opposite to the anti-competitive duty of Monitor, which is enshrined in the ability to set conditions and so on, is not mirrored in the integration of services, and this is an extremely good example of that. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to indicate that it is simply an oversight and it should be included in the Bill.