Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Baroness Tonge

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Walton, who, as we all know, carries such respect on health matters in this House. I do not doubt the sincerity of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in his fundamental opposition to the whole Bill. Indeed, he expressed it very clearly in his Observer article yesterday. He put the arguments very fairly on his Motion, but I have absolutely no hesitation in disagreeing with it today—and I say to him, in his capacity as a doctor, that I feel no physical or mental discomfort with a whipped vote on the matter, for the very key reason that my noble friend Lady Williams mentioned.

The risk register whose publication is being requested was written as long ago as November 2010. It will certainly not relate to the Bill being considered today, as it was drawn up many months before the pause in the Bill’s proceedings. Many changes to the Bill were made as a result of the Future Forum process, headed up by Professor Steve Field. The Bill was then changed significantly in Committee and on Report in this House, as the recent House of Commons research paper makes absolutely clear. The risks identified in the register are therefore those of the old Bill, long since superseded, or even of the White Paper which preceded it. It will have been based on worst-case scenarios—

[Baroness Tonge]

In all sincerity, if the risk register is so totally out of date and bears no relevance at all to the new amended Bill, would its publication not be a wonderful opportunity for this side of the House to show how much it has improved the Bill and dispatched all risks?

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, my next sentence was about to deal with precisely the point made by my noble friend. It can therefore be argued that publication now by the Government could, and would, wholly distort rational discussion about the Bill in its present form. The job of scrutiny carried out by your Lordships’ House is to look at every scenario and from the experience of its Members, which is considerable, suggest amendments which mitigate the problems identified. That is precisely what this House has carried out and, I would say, to good effect. However, the Motion is not suggesting that we delay the current Bill against the remote possibility that there is some risk in it which the Department of Health has identified and this House has not. It is saying that we should delay it pending the First-tier Tribunal’s reason for its decision being published.

What will passing this amendment to the Motion therefore achieve? When we know the details of the decision, the Government will still be fully entitled to appeal. They have already won with the strategic risk register, and may well take the view that they will be able to overturn Professor Angel’s decision on the transitional register. Do we want to deny them the right to appeal in the face of the very fact that with one limited exception, which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has mentioned, the Labour Government did not publish these risk registers when they were in government? Where would that leave us, even if the detailed reasons become available?

I was slightly taken aback by the use of the expression “rush” from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. I submit that a debate over revealing an up-to-date risk register might just have some merits, but not in these circumstances, where its contents are of historical interest only.