Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Consequential Amendments) Order 2013

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

In conclusion, I hope I have demonstrated that the draft order contains no more than is consequential on the Act. It makes some minor but necessary changes to keep the statute book up to date, in particular to ensure that clinical commissioning groups are subject to the requirements of the Audit Commission Act. I commend the draft order to the Committee.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am sure that the Grand Committee will be grateful to the noble Earl for his very comprehensive description of this very important order. I refer the Committee to my health interests, contained in the register.

It is a curiosity of Department of Health orders that we are having this debate on an affirmative resolution on a quite unexceptional order, and yet around us great debate is going on about the competition statutory instrument—which the noble Earl will know a little bit about, I suspect—which is a negative order. The noble Earl has explained that this is essentially making changes to primary legislation and that is why it has to be considered in this way. However, having made reference to the order on public procurement, SI/2013/257, is the noble Earl in a position to update the Committee on whether or not he intends to revoke the order?

I was interested in Article 4, which refers to the Audit Commission Act. My understanding is that either the Audit Commission has already been abolished or it is shortly to be abolished. I am not going to open up that debate today but it has been put to me that one of the benefits of the Audit Commission is that the fees it sets help keep audit fees down generally. My question to the noble Earl is: if clinical commissioning groups now have to use the big auditing firms, is there not some concern that fees will rise over time because there is not the discipline of the Audit Commission being able to provide an audit service itself? Given that the management costs available to clinical commissioning groups are quite limited, that would be a concern. Other than that, of course I am happy to support this order.