Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I realise that I did not answer the noble Lord and I apologise to him. It may be helpful for him to know that we intend to work with patient and professional groups and with emerging clinical commissioning groups to determine the best arrangements for appointing members of governing bodies. We will be issuing regulations in due course setting out in more detail the requirements for appointing clinical—that is to say, non-GP—members to the governing body. The report that we had from the NHS Future Forum stated that it would be unhelpful for clinical commissioning groups' governing bodies to be representative of every group under the sun. We agreed with that. Requiring a bigger group of professionals on the governing body itself, or expanding it in any way at all, would not really mean that a broader range of interests are involved in designing patient services. It would just lead to governing bodies that are too large and slow to do their job well. However, we think that it is important for clinical commissioning groups to be led clinically. That is the point.