Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, Monitor has a range of duties which could potentially conflict with each other. Of course, we have discussed that previously, and it is recognised in Clause 63 of the Bill. In specialised care, it is sometimes desirable to limit the number of providers to ensure that patient volumes are sufficient to support clinical expertise and high quality, safe services, an approach which was promoted by the Bristol inquiry and enshrined in the Carter report on specialised commissioning in 2006. This is entirely consistent with Monitor’s main duty under Clause 59(1), to "““protect and promote the interests of people who use health care services by promoting provision of health care services which is economic, efficient and effective, and maintains or improves the quality of the services””." However, in terms of one of Monitor’s duties under Clause 59(3), to prevent anti-competitive behaviour, this could potentially be described as a restriction of competition. It is therefore important, I believe, to get a clear understanding that Monitor’s paramount duty should be towards the safety of patients, or, to put this another way, towards their welfare. In other words, it is legitimate for competition to be restricted in the NHS where it is in the interests of patient safety. This amendment is designed to seek clarification that Monitor’s role in preventing anti-competitive behaviour will not debar the designation of providers of specialised services. I beg to move.