NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill

My hon. Friend is generous in allowing interventions. Barely 150 years ago we abandoned press-ganging for the Royal Navy, yet we are now reintroducing it for the charitable sector. It strikes me as odd not to “encourage” the Secretary of State or chief executive to recruit more trustees, but rather to force them to do so. As my hon. Friend rightly said, trustees are volunteers who step forward and step up for the community. They do something that is above and beyond their social duty every day, and we should encourage them in that. He is right to place such an important weight on that, but I question the legislative requirement of making the Secretary of State able to make those appointments. He seems to be asking not for the Secretary of State to be able to ratify a volunteer, but rather for them to go out and call somebody in from the fields, factories and cities and tell them to take up that position. That is slightly losing the focus. If the Secretary of State is not required to do that, all we need is for people to have the opportunity to volunteer, in which case the chief executive or Secretary of State can merely advertise the post.