My Lords, that was a very important intervention, and I am grateful to the noble Lord for jogging my memory. I think that he would agree, though, that apart from the price, the point was that it was an important element in getting waiting times and waiting lists down. At the moment, we are clueless about how the Government are going to do this. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, we will have a debate—I hope tonight—in relation to procurement, but I say to the Government that the open-ended nature of the regulation-making power that they propose to give to Ministers in such an important area is utterly unacceptable and has been drawn to the House’s attention by both the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Constitution Committee, as the noble Lord knows.
4.15 pm
This is a very curious group. I shall just mention the two amendments to which I have put my name—though I think the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said it all—and refer to the importance of self-management. The evidence in favour of self-management is overwhelming. I refer the House to the data analytics team at the Health Foundation, who have begun to fill some of the evidence gap in relation to this. They have shown that the patients most able to manage their health conditions have 38% fewer emergency admissions
and 32% fewer A&E attendances than those least able to manage their conditions; they also have 18% fewer GP appointments. This is the first study in the NHS to have demonstrated an association between a patient’s ability to self-manage and the use of services across primary and secondary care. That is an important start to an evidence base. The Minister has not been sympathetic to many amendments; it has been warm words but little action so far. I hope that, on our fifth day in Committee, on these two amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the Minister might just say that he will accept them.