Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is addressing us in the guise of Christmas spirit, it is well disguised from most of us. However, it may be worth reflecting at this juncture that this is the 41st day that the Bill has been debated on the Floor of this House or that of the other place—a quarter of all sitting days in this calendar year. I thank all parliamentarians, especially noble Lords, who participated in subjecting the Bill to such unprecedented scrutiny. It is a better Bill as a result; the Government are better informed as a result; and I look forward to our further debates in 2012. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, that parliamentary scrutiny of legislation and the actions of government are of paramount importance. The Bill has, as I said, received a huge amount of parliamentary scrutiny during its passage, and I have no expectation that this will stop following Royal Assent—and nor should it. Ministers will continue to provide information to Parliament—for example, in response to Parliamentary Questions and Select Committees. I am sure that we will be providing a lot of information both on the implementation of the Bill and on health and social care more widely in the months and years ahead. Your Lordships’ House has shown itself more than adequate to the task of scrutiny, using the mechanisms already available to it. However, looking at this amendment, I do not feel that that ability to perform scrutiny would be particularly enhanced by the noble Lord’s proposals. Therefore, I do not think that the amendment is necessary and I shall explain briefly why. One reason is that Ministers already provide information requested by Select Committees. They already respond to requests for Parliament to provide information on the operation of legislation. In addition, the Bill will be subject to the existing system of post-legislative scrutiny. I can reaffirm the commitment that I made at Second Reading: although five years would normally elapse prior to the Department of Health undertaking post-legislative scrutiny of a Bill, we will bring that forward to three years for this Bill. After one year, were we to imagine such a process, to me it would not be sensible to conduct a review. Substantial elements of the Bill would have yet to be implemented in full at that time. For example, the NHS Commissioning Board and Monitor will take on their full responsibilities only from April 2013. Therefore, as the noble Lord has rightly said, although activity is going on now, I think that he is perhaps straying into a review of policy in general rather than of this legislation. The policy of course is kept under constant review. The Department of Health will submit a memorandum to the Health Select Committee of the other place when post-legislative scrutiny takes place. This memorandum will include a preliminary assessment of how the Act has worked out in practice, relative to objectives and benchmarks identified during the Bill’s passage. The Select Committee, or indeed any other parliamentary committee, can obviously then decide to conduct further inquiries. Of course, the existence of this process does not stop a Select Committee investigating the implementation of an Act at any time it chooses. I hope that the spirit of the noble Lord’s proposal is one that the Government have addressed and indeed met, and that I have provided at least some reassurance to him to enable him to withdraw his amendment.