Health and Social Care Bill

I will finish and then I will respond to the noble Lord if I need to. I am well aware that this proposal has met with concern from some quarters. I will explain why we are proposing this arrangement and why we do not feel that the case for having a separate body is stronger. HealthWatch England will have clout. It will have a seat at the top table, taking centre stage in providing advice on patient and public views to the CQC, Monitor, English local authorities and the Secretary of State for Health. Noble Lords were right to say that Healthwatch England must influence all these bodies; that will be its responsibility. My noble friend Lady Jolly, too, made that clear. Each of these persons or bodies will have a duty to respond to the advice. Through local healthwatch, HealthWatch England will be closely linked to the views of people expressing views about the services that most directly impact on their lives. Our proposals for HealthWatch England will place it at the heart of the system—not at the top, divorced from the views of local people, as CPPIH turned out to be. As a committee of CQC, HealthWatch England will be able to draw on the best of CQC's evidence base on quality and standards of care. The enthusiasm with which CQC wishes to learn via healthwatch is instructive. It will be helpful to CQC to have information coming from local healthwatch and HealthWatch England to CQC to alert it to problems such as those at Winterbourne View. This will give HealthWatch England a prominent position within a CQC that will have a strengthened role in assuring the safety and quality of health and adult social care services, and a strengthened focus on the concerns of health and social care consumers. This will ensure that from the outset HealthWatch England will have a greater presence and ability to influence than would a body established from scratch. The Bill already contains significant safeguards to ensure that HealthWatch England will be able to operate effectively in that situation. For example, it will provide advice to a wide range of organisations. I have just mentioned central national organisations and local authorities. However, we listened carefully to concerns expressed in Committee about possible conflicts of interest between the CQC and HealthWatch England. This issue was raised again today. We therefore welcome Amendment 228, tabled by my noble friends Lady Cumberlege and Lady Jolly. It places duties on CQC and HealthWatch England to have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State about managing conflicts between these bodies. This is a sensible suggestion, and we are happy to support the amendment. While acting independently, HealthWatch England must of course be accountable. Government Amendment 229 places a duty on it to send all local healthwatch organisations a copy of its annual report. It was the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who thought that this was a good idea and tabled an amendment to this effect in Committee. We agreed that it would help to secure the intended wide transparency and communication between HealthWatch England and local healthwatch. I am grateful to the noble Lord for flagging that up and suggesting the idea. It is also important that local healthwatch—