Health and Social Care Bill

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I made clear in my remarks that I believe one should start by specifying quality—that would include her point about best practice—and then allow the market to bid against that. Where potential suppliers, whether NHS or otherwise, can come in below the existing price—call it the tariff price or what you will—that will be a spur to everybody else to consider whether they can deliver that quality—I stress ““that quality””—better, more effectively and more cheaply. That mechanism will be totally absent in the National Health Service if the Bill is not changed in the way that I have suggested or something equivalent.