Health and Social Care Bill

The noble Baroness is quite right and no legislation can provide for that culture change, as she will appreciate. At the same time, we can put in some important building blocks to encourage a change of culture. One is to have maximum clinical input into how the quality standards are framed and formed and, indeed, input from patient representative groups. It is very important to see things from their perspective. We can create duties, as we have in the Bill. The work that my department has done on accelerating the uptake of innovation is relevant here. The NICE implementation collaborative—the NIC—that was part of our announcement about the growth agenda some days ago is designed to bring together the relevant stakeholder groups to see how the uptake of innovation can be accelerated and how people can be made to look at working practices in rather a different way so that cultures shift. However, it is easy for me to stand here and say that; it is less easy to drive this forward. I would not pretend that the Government are necessarily in the best place to do that, although we are clear that this shift in approach, which largely underlines the QIPP agenda as well, has to take place. However, it will take a little time.