Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, owing to a slight miscommunication, my noble friend Lord Patel and I intended not to move Amendment 345, so we will move to Amendment 346, which is very similar in purpose to Amendment 345. As I informed the Government Whips’ Office earlier this morning, I shall move into this group Amendment 348, which has some similarity to the amendments in this group. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to find his briefing and order it accordingly. We now reach Part 9, which is concerned with information standards and the Health and Social Care Information Centre. I should declare an interest because, as a Minister, I was a kind of male midwife at the birth of the information centre some years ago. It is an organisation that has had its ups and downs, but it has grown in stature and I support the Government’s wish to put it on to a statutory basis. There is nothing between us on that issue. I also welcome the idea of an information standard specified in legislation, but I wish to strengthen the provision on this set out in Clause 247(1). Amendment 346 would replace the word ““may”” with ““shall”” in Clause 247(1) so that the Secretary of State had to prepare and publish an information standard. Amendment 347 would extend the subsection to define that the standard covers the collection, processing and dissemination of information rather than just processing. I have not chosen these three terms by accident. It is important that collection is covered so that an eye is kept on avoiding unnecessary data collection requests being imposed on people at the local level. One of the problems that the NHS has faced over the years is a very significant number of—perhaps I may put it this way—slightly random demands for information to be provided and not always even on a comparable basis. The purpose of adding collection is to make sure that we do not go back on some of the progress that has been made in this area. We also need to ensure that we are clear that the standard covers dissemination. We want to ensure that the information that is collected and processed is disseminated in as useful a way as possible to the NHS and to other users of those data as well as to the public. Again, I think that this has been an issue. One of the more bizarre things that has happened in recent years is that a very effective commercial organisation—I make no criticism of it because I am a great fan—Dr Foster, has had to convert much of the NHS’s data into a format that is useful. That is a significant issue about the way in which, often, public services collect information but do not put it into a useful format for the public and other users of that information. I would hope that the information standard could tackle some of these historical problems. That is why the standard is made a requirement and why, in my view, it should go wider than just processing and cover collection and the dissemination of information. Amendment 347A goes further by bringing this all together and specifying the purposes to be achieved by the information standard requirement on collection processing and the dissemination of information, and the benefits that the standard is meant to produce in commissioning public health, service provision and public information and choice. It is important that we strengthen the Bill in this way. I am full of admiration for the Government’s good intentions in this area and I hope that we can strengthen it a bit further. I wonder whether I might also speak to Amendment 348 as part of this group—I had certainly intended to group it with these amendments—rather than in the next group. This amendment is a kind of belt and braces approach based on my own experience of public data collection organisations. Like many quangos, they can have a life of their own and need to be kept under review to ensure that they stick to their purpose, keep their costs under control and remember the demands that they make on those who supply the raw data, at some cost to the providers of those data. The amendment would require an independent audit of the centre’s processes every three years to ensure that they are kept in good working order. I am not too fussed about the period; what is important is the principle that every so often there should be an independent review of those processes. Finally, perhaps I may make an observation to the Minister. With good reason, the Government have put quite a lot of detail about the workings of the information centre into the Bill. I for one have no quarrel with that and have proposed a bit more detail myself. However, in this Committee, I and others have tried to have more detailed requirements on financial management and performance information put into the Bill, which are areas in which the NHS has often proved to be weak. The Government have resisted putting more detailed requirements of that kind into the Bill. I find that puzzling. Why is it so important to be more prescriptive about the workings of the information centre but not about the weak financial management systems of the NHS, which have contributed so much to previous NHS financial crises and will do so again as the NHS lurches towards the next one? I would welcome the Minister’s observations on this before I prepare amendments on financial management information for Report. I beg to move Amendment 346.