Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Owen and Lord Clement-Jones

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Owen]

I said that people outside this House consider it to be a flagrant lie. I have been around Parliament long enough to know what I cannot say and what I can.

There is another aspect to the Bill. The Government also fought an election on the basis of a constitutional promise that there would be no increase in the powers of EU legislation unless there was a referendum. There are very serious questions about the Bill as to the impact on EU legislation and the extent to which we will see the Commission making decisions on the National Health Service that it has not hitherto thought it either wise or, possibly, empowered to make. That is the second big constitutional question.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords—

[Lord Owen]

No, the noble Lord has had his say. All I am saying now to the House is that this is a decision on which there are strong opinions in many ways. A lot of Members will vote just on the basis that under no circumstances do they want risk registers published.

I say only this—that when companies are having an IPO, we legislate for them to produce the fullest, most detailed risk register of this. We also empower them in their annual, and in the case of America in their quarterly, statements to reveal risk registers at a penalty of going to court if they lie about it. There were times in this debate when I almost thought we were being asked to give a complete carte blanche to the Civil Service to say what it liked irrespective. I hope that is not the position of the Cabinet Secretaries and the Permanent Secretaries. It is possible that either a commissioner or a tribunal might look at a risk register and think that there were flagrant factual errors.

I think it is very dangerous to use “principle” on this question, if I may say so to the noble Earl. The principle surely cannot be that under the Freedom of Information Act some risk registers might never need to be published in the public good. That is a judgment on which, as he says, one can then go to appeal. However, there comes a point when one would have to judge against the background of repeated demands for disclosure. It is on this that the House must make up its mind. Can we wait a couple of weeks—three at the most—before the House prorogues to hear the words of the chairman of the appeal tribunal to whom we in the Freedom of Information Act gave the power to make that decision? The fact that it is against the Government does not mean we should give them a carte blanche, and I hope that this House will not do so. I wish therefore to test the opinion of the House.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Owen and Lord Clement-Jones

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Owen]

My Lords, the case has been made extremely well for accepting that one of the most vehement elements of criticism could be somewhat defused if this amendment was accepted by the Government. After all, some people have argued that the whole of Part 3 should be abolished. By accepting that the Government are going to go ahead but just asking that the relevant measures should be phased in seems to me a very rational and reasonable way of acknowledging that there is very deep-seated and justifiable criticism of this legislation.

Reference has been made to the primacy of the need to make the efficiency savings and the need to carry the people in the health service with regard to the provisions in the Bill. I do not want to weary the House by listing the royal colleges that are now opposed to this legislation but it is a staggering development. Nobody can deny the phenomenon that we are seeing; it is unprecedented. I would never have conceived it possible that there would be this degree of professional criticism of the Bill when I first started to look at it and realised that it was in my judgment a very bad Bill. Indeed, it remains so in my judgment. However, I am not here to argue all these cases. This seems to me an important amendment which is geared to accepting that the Government will certainly resist the dropping of Part 3, but may be amenable to phasing it in. Indeed, the Minister might propose a different phasing-in period. It would seem to be a very wise course to deal with the essential elements—the efficiency savings—then bed in some of the other aspects that are new in the Bill and may well be accepted within a short period of time, and leave the element which causes the most deep-seated opposition until later. I hope that the Minister will listen to the argument, reflect it in his speech and be ready to make this important concession to his critics.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Owen, as regards supporting the amendment. However, I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has adopted a much more emollient line on Amendment 300A, is not making a full frontal attack on the whole Bill and is looking simply at Part 3. There is certainly an argument to be explored in what she had to say but I cannot understand the logic of why, of all the parts of the Bill that she has talked about today, she is focusing on Part 3. I find it extraordinary that throughout the debates that have taken place on the Bill the Opposition have refused to accept that the National Health Service Act 2006 introduced price competition into the NHS. If Part 3 did nothing else but plug some of the competition problems in the 2006 Act, I would support it.