My Lords, I too will be extremely brief on this, given the hour and the number of groups we have to go through.
I am very interested to hear the response of the Minister on this; it feels as though there has been a sort of gentle relaxation, and it would be good to understand the boundaries for foundation trusts around how much they can increase their income from private patients at exactly the time when we have a phenomenal NHS waiting list and people are becoming more seriously ill as a result of the pandemic and there are delays in getting their treatment.
I say this particularly in the light of two recent comments—as I will call them—by the Secretary of State for Health. One was about increasing the amount of contracting from the NHS to private hospitals to perform large numbers of investigations as part of the
backlog, but this is becoming habit now in this exceptional time—we have bad flu winters as well, but this is an exceptional time. Perhaps slightly more worryingly, the other concerns proposals that were outlined, informally, by the Secretary of State a couple of days ago to change entirely the nature of contracts with GPs. I am concerned that some of the structures, particularly for foundation trusts, are being loosened without Parliament being aware. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
6.30 pm