Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for flagging up this issue and for the work that she has long done in this area, which I saw particularly clearly when she and I were both trustees of UNICEF. Our aim is that HealthWatch England and local healthwatch organisations should be there to understand the views and needs, locally and nationally, of patients and other service users and members of the wider public—everyone. I reassure noble Lords that, at both national and local level, this clearly includes children and young people. I realise that the concern expressed by noble Lords arises from deficiencies in how things have operated in the past. The Future Forum flagged up the need to ensure that, for example, local healthwatch should be more representative of communities than had been the case previously, which why is my honourable friend Paul Burstow in the other place introduced an amendment to the effect that local healthwatch should represent the breadth of views and diverse characteristics within a community, whether it be carers, young people or otherwise. It is important that children should not be overlooked, either as patients or carers. The key is empathy and understanding whoever the person is, focusing on the patient and their family and looking at things from their point of view. As we change from LINks to local healthwatch this may be an important opportunity to try to work out how better to address, in a more strategic, holistic view, what the needs of patients, their families, children and young people might be, including those in the kind of incredibly difficult situation to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred. It is clear that not only within the National Health Service are children often overlooked—as are the elderly often—but that the patient groups are not as focused as they might be. In the annual reports of LINks and so on there are wide areas which currently are not getting the attention that they should be, which I am sure local healthwatch will wish to address. Specifically, local healthwatch needs to represent the views of all people within the local population, including children and young people. However, we do not think that this should be in the Bill because, whatever the age of the patient or their family, and however marginal they may seem, we want to be inclusive and not exclusive, and if you list one group you are in danger, therefore, of excluding others. However, we hear what noble Lords say and, as these organisations and the pathfinder local healthwatch organisations come into play, we will ensure that what noble Lords have said is flagged up to them. I hope that on this basis noble Lords will be willing to withdraw their amendments.