UK Parliament / Open data

Health and Care Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Lucas (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 16 March 2022. It occurred during Debate on bills on Health and Care Bill.

My Lords, I entirely support my noble friend Lord Moynihan when he asks for proper accountability. That is what drives the few examples of successful cross-departmental co-operation. One of the recent missed opportunities is Defra not picking up on aspects of the Glover report that deal with people getting out into the landscape. To make a difference to that, Defra has to care and it has to be brought to account, but there also has to be a good enough mechanism to ensure that if Defra does propose to do something, someone is going to fund it. That would certainly apply too to schools’ collaboration with local sports clubs. Parents up and down the land want that to happen. But how is that going to be afforded? How is that going to be made to happen? Who is holding the systems accountable? There has to be some system whereby accountability and interest flow through—as my noble friend said, ideally, to Parliament—to make that happen.

I have written to the Minister on perioperative care, which is another example. How does the NHS collaborate with all the other people who might provide the support required for effective perioperative care? They are not in the NHS; it does not work that way. You can have a system that just involves spending the money and ticking the box because that money has been spent; or you can have one with real accountability, in which people care whether you get the results and are measuring that, and who feed that through to someone with a central interest in things. So I am really going to listen to the Minister with great interest on this.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

820 c402 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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