Health and Social Care Bill

I think that the noble Baroness and I agree that cherry picking is highly undesirable, which is why this Bill outlaws it. I do not see, as some do, competition and integration as polar opposites, nor are they mutually exclusive. I agreed entirely with the Future Forum when it said in its report last year: "““We have also heard many people saying that competition and integration are opposing forces. We believe this is a false dichotomy. Integrated care is vital, and competition can and should be used by commissioners as a powerful tool to drive this for patients””." That is worth keeping in our minds. In response to my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, let me turn to competition law. I understand that some noble Lords want to prevent competition law ever applying to NHS services. That is to wish for the impossible. The question is not whether competition law should apply to the health service but how. That is why I agree with my noble friend that we must make sure that the NHS is insulated from the inappropriate application of competition law. In particular, we must ensure that clinicians are free to commission NHS services in the way that best serves patients' interests and that there are no impediments to beneficial co-operation to increase integration, improve quality or reduce inequalities. Under our proposals, a series of protections will provide the sort of insulation against inappropriate application of competition law that my noble friend and others require. I hope that the House will allow me to set this out in a little detail. Co-operation for the benefit of patients should not breach competition law. Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Section 9 of the Competition Act lay down exemptions which apply if the wider benefits of an agreement outweigh its anti-competitive effects. On an individual basis, we would expect collaborative arrangements whose overall effect was beneficial to patients to meet the criteria in Article 101(3) and Section 9. Competition law would be unlikely to apply to a wide range of NHS services. Some obvious examples are accident and emergency, trauma, critical care, maternity, specialist surgery and many others, particularly in remote or rural areas. Monitor would support the NHS to understand where competition law does and does not apply. A key benefit of establishing Monitor as a sector regulator, with concurrent responsibilities under the Competition Act, is that it will be able to provide authoritative guidance to the NHS on where that law would and would not apply. The Government's firm expectation is that Monitor would produce sector-specific guidance and address this question in terms of relevant examples, including models of integrated care and clinical networks, which would be updated in line with developments in healthcare practice. This guidance would help reduce unnecessary fear of legal challenge and uncertainty for both commissioners and providers. Monitor could also provide informal advice in individual cases, building on what the Co-operation and Competition Panel does now. For example, that might include commenting on what types of collaborative arrangements and specific provisions within such arrangements are and are not likely to comply with the competition rules. Any such advice would be without prejudice to any future decision that Monitor might have to take to enforce the provisions of the Competition Act. However, like the guidance, such advice would provide reassurance to providers and could help them to avoid unnecessary legal costs. If and when it became appropriate, Monitor could make the case for block exemptions. That would mean that the Competition Act would not apply to specified arrangements for the provision of NHS services. At this stage, it is not clear whether or where block exemptions might be appropriate, but an example of the sort of arrangement that could potentially be covered is clinical networks. In any event, this protection would remain available and there is no doubt in my mind that Monitor would be better placed than the OFT to determine when and where it might be needed. In these and other areas, competition is unlikely to be effective in providing services on the scale or in the way that best promotes patient's interests. The NHS often acts to promote social objectives to ensure that patients receive the level of service that they could not afford or which private companies might not find it profitable to provide. Applying competition law in such contexts makes little sense and such activities are likely to fall outside its scope. Next, commissioners would not have to create markets against the interests of patients. Clinicians will be free to commission services in the way they consider best. We intend to make it clear that commissioners will have a full range of options and that they will be under no legal obligation to create new markets, particularly where competition would not be effective in driving high standards and value for patients. As I have already explained, this will be made absolutely clear through secondary legislation and supporting guidance, as a result of the Bill. The Bill already creates duties on commissioners to secure continuous improvement in the quality of services, reduce inequalities and promote integrated services. The Government intend to complement these by making it explicit through regulations under Clause 73 of the Bill that commissioning decisions must be in the best interests of patients, those decisions must be transparent and commissioners will be accountable for them. We would expect the NHS Commissioning Board to maintain guidance to support commissioners in these decisions, based on the available evidence and drawing on academic research. It is worth reflecting that without Part 3, the main legal provision on commissioning NHS services would continue to be the general procurement regulations for public bodies introduced by the previous Administration in 2006. The application of that law to the NHS is unclear. Without the provision that we intend to include in regulations under Clause 73, commissioners would continue to face risk of legal challenge when they decided not to open services up to competition, even where the decision was in the best interests of patients. That uncertainty is unacceptable. Finally, the Bill would prevent private companies taking over NHS trusts or foundation trusts. There has been a lot of misconception about that. I assure the House today, unequivocally, that that could not happen. I now turn to the opposition amendments. Amendment 163D raises the application of competition law to the provision of NHS services. Its intention is to ensure that competition law does not apply to the provision of NHS services. However, as I have said, there is a basic point to make here: it is not within the gift of this Bill to secure that. It is like saying that if you pass a law saying that black is white, that is what will happen. However, what I agree on absolutely is that we need to protect the NHS from inappropriate application of competition law and its undesirable effects. Equally, as I said earlier, we do not want to leave patients unprotected from potential abuses by providers. That would be the effect of the amendment and I hope that the noble Baroness will reconsider her wish to move it. I also referred to the fact that this Bill would provide for clinical commissioners to decide how to secure NHS services to best serve the interests of their patients. Hence, I do not agree with Amendment 178A. The NHS has always been a comprehensive service, free to patients, with treatment and care based on clinical need and delivered through a wide range of diverse providers. That includes GPs, dentists, independent sector providers, NHS trusts, foundation trusts and a range of charities and social enterprises. Taken together, these providers operate across the various sectors of healthcare, including the community and mental health. They provide a range of services, including vital specialist services to people in lower socioeconomic and minority groups, and people with rare medical conditions. Amendment 178A does not acknowledge that reality at all. Instead, it seeks to create an arbitrary and unnecessary presumption in favour of NHS and foundation trusts which would likely act against patients' best interests. For example, the amendment would make it more difficult for a clinical commissioner seeking to manage long-term conditions such as diabetes or COPD in primary care and in the community—involving GP practices or social enterprises—instead of sending those patients to hospital. That could prevent choice for patients in a very crucial area. It could also prevent choice in end-of-life care by restricting the extent to which organisations such as Macmillan and Marie Curie were able to extend the services that they delivered for the NHS. It could prevent charities such as Turning Point transforming—