Health and Social Care Bill

I want to intervene briefly because we want to vote on these matters today. The amendment subtly gets to the problem at the heart of the Bill, which totally underestimates the new pressures that will build up within foundation trusts on management to change the nature of the patient body that comes into the trust for financial reasons. The noble Lord who has just spoken in many ways let the cat out of the bag. Pressures are exerted on clinicians by management to take actions that they do not necessarily want to take. If a trust is building up a substantial body of patients referred to it by insurance companies, it will want to be sure that within that trust's operation some element of priority is given to its patients if only to minimise the liability that the insurance company has to the patient to pay their bills. In 10 years' time, when the Government review the Bill, they will find that the pressure on management to change what happens in hospitals will lead to the beginning of the destruction of the National Health Service as we know it.