Health and Social Care Bill

Not entirely, my Lords. As I was coming on to say, an important piece of work is that the GMC is updating its guidance on how its members should work in the new setup. It is important that members of bodies such as the GMC, the BMA and other professional bodies are involved, should they wish to be, in setting out the detail of what those sanctions should be. We should end up with something that is effective and workable, as well as principled. The noble Lord's argument does not therefore stand up. Nothing in these amendments would preclude that sort of sanction being put into regulations or guidance. Our amendments are, admittedly, not as detailed as the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, nor do they—as his amendment does—incorporate language from the world of commercial legislation. The terminology of conflicted arrangements and exemption procedures comes from commercial law, and I am not sure that that is appropriate for what we are seeking to do. At the end of this debate we should achieve the objective that all noble Lords are seeking—transparency and accountability around the decision-making processes of CCGs, and the legislation and regulations around them should be sufficiently robust so that not only can members of the public have faith in those procedures but the procedures should be workable. I accept that our previous amendments included provisions that were so draconian that they would not work in practice. We could have ended up in a position whereby the very people who should be making decisions on CCGs would not have been eligible to do so, particularly at the precise moment at which their expertise would be necessary. Our amendments are not by any means the end of the matter; they are the beginning of a process that should move on further in the discussion on regulations and guidance. That is where much of the detail of this should come to the fore, but the principles that we have set out in these amendments are robust and workable, and I hope that in his reply the Minister will accept them.