My Lords, I am very interested in this part, and added my name to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. He sparked my interest by accusing me of taking through the 2006 Act. Only on further reflection with my ageing brain did I find that I had not taken it through the House when I was a Minister because it was a consolidation Act. As far as I can recall, it went through both Houses of Parliament without any direct consideration, because there were no amendments to any of the legislation covered by the Act.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in a very Sherlock Holmes manner, has been pursuing where this all came from. As far as I can see, it came from 1977, after a period in the Callaghan Government when there was great excitement about the relationship between the NHS, private practice and the private sector, following my period as private secretary to Barbara Castle. It comes from that generation. As the Minister and his officials indicated in a helpful meeting that we had, it has never been used. We are talking about a provision that comes not just from a long time ago but from a totally different context. We have Whitehall picking up a piece of legislation which it thinks may be useful and slotting it into the Bill with an amended purpose.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, the medical devices sector does not think that there has been adequate consultation. It cannot understand what the Government are up to on this. The only justification it seems to have been given is that the department is modernising—whatever that means—a particular piece of old legislation. Modernisation is one of the words that one treats with certain amount of caution, particularly when it affects public services. We are very unclear why the devices sector has attracted the attention of the Department of Health.
We are clear what the mischief is on the medicines side that the Government are trying to address. We are not clear what the mischief is on the devices side—medical supplies—that has caused the Government to go rootling around in the archives to find a bit of legislation that enables them to place a considerable requirement on the devices sector, which has been quietly minding its own business with a kitemarking system and the usual tendering processes for selling its products to the NHS.
I think we need to be a lot clearer than we are now as to why the Government need this modernising legislation. I remember that when I was a Minister one of the things I was trying to do was reduce the regulatory burden on the NHS and the health sector. I confess to having slipped up a bit in that I totally missed this 1977 regulatory burden. I wish I had spotted it, because we could have struck it out of the legislation while we were tidying up other things. Having got that off my chest and owned up to it, I would really like to know why the Government want this gold-plated provision on regulating a sector which, as far as I can see, has not caused any great problems. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why they have suddenly gone in for this attention and whether they have actually been neglectful of the sector. Has it been ripping off people a great deal for the past seven or eight years? Should we have acted sooner?
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