In a previous life I have been both a senior NHS manager and a leader of a council. This is as clear as mud. If, for example, the partnership board decided it wanted to reconfigure local healthcare
and a hospital was to be closed, who would be held responsible ultimately by the public for that decision? Would the Secretary of State ultimately be able to stop that decision? Coming back to what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, where would specialised commissioning fit in? It would not be a national standard, but would what the Minister calls the health partnership be able to move away from decisions made by NHS England on specialised commissioning? If it did, who would be able to overturn that decision? Who would be able to ask for a review of that decision, and to whom?