Health and Social Care Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, made exactly this point at the meeting that we had the other day with my noble friend Lord Howe, who I thought countered his points extremely effectively. However, I realise that is now almost 6 pm and I know that noble friends have other appointments; maybe we would otherwise carry on until Christmas. We take on board what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has said. I am sure that he takes on board the counterpoints from my noble friend Lord Howe, but we will continue to discuss how best to ensure that local healthwatch organisations are effective in the way that we need them to be. Some of the amendments of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege increase the role of the Secretary of State in relation to local healthwatch organisations. Though we understand the intent behind the amendments, we do not feel that that is quite the way to go. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the need to keep the issue of local healthwatch organisations’ independence under review and we are working closely with stakeholders to look at how best we can support that independence at local level. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege made a range of proposals which were extremely interesting and we will take those back, along with other noble Lords’ suggestions. We are keen that local healthwatch organisations have the flexibility to work with and for their local communities. I am aware of the concern expressed by a number of stakeholders that the Bill does not contain sufficient flexibility. I can confirm that we also want to make sure that the process of getting local healthwatch organisations started is as efficient as possible. We want to assist in that and again we discussed this with stakeholders yesterday. We would not want to see local healthwatch’s ability to get on with its valuable role slowed down. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege suggested that local healthwatch organisations should have a stronger role in relation to CCGs’ commissioning plans. I sympathise with the sentiment behind this amendment and with other proposals to try to make sure that the voice of the patient is heard. However, this would place a further statutory function on local healthwatch organisations, and it might be unnecessarily prescriptive. There are, of course, arrangements in place in the Bill for local healthwatch organisations to feed their concerns to HealthWatch England, and HealthWatch England can also provide the NHS Commissioning Board with information and advice on the views of local healthwatch organisations on the standard of healthcare. Were a local healthwatch organisation to have concerns that a clinical commissioning group had not taken proper account of its views in commissioning plans, they could be raised by this route. However, this is an important issue, and I will take it away to consider it further.