Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I have several amendments in this group. I shall start with Amendment 294N, which is a probing amendment. As far as I have understood it, social enterprise bodies which are NHS bodies in all but name are coming into existence. They have evolved from PCTs under the transforming community services programme. They will be subject to special health administration arrangements. I ask the Government to confirm whether the social enterprises that come under the health special administration arrangements are coming under arrangements based on insolvency law and that, as such, that allows assets to be transferred outside the NHS and the redundancy payments are not guaranteed. Amendment 295CA is intended to ensure that clinical commissioning groups are consulted before the Secretary of State makes regulations that allow Monitor to impose charges on commissioners. The charge imposed can include a levy to fund Monitor’s functions that have to be invoked in the event of failures. Amendment 295CB is intended to ensure that when setting such a levy, Monitor takes into account the impact of the levy on the financial stability of the organisation, especially a financial trust that is already in distress or failing. Amendment 304A requires that the commissioners are considered when services of a failed financial trust are considered by Monitor and should be involved in the decision as to which should be continued, and that such services must include some continuation of education and training, because in planning for the future workforce, if a whole lot of posts were suddenly lost, it would destabilise the workforce planning. That is in addition to considerations such as the service provision and issues of equity and access. That becomes particularly important because if you do not have the staff with the appropriate training, you cannot, in the long term, provide the service anyway. Amendment 304B is intended to ensure that commissioners are involved in the board's role in agreeing arrangements to secure continued access to NHS services will be achieved. Will that include the board’s selecting which commissioner would become lead commissioner for the process during a failure?