Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, before the House goes into Committee on the Health and Social Care Bill, I should like to take the opportunity to update noble Lords on the latest position with regard to the Department of Health risk registers. The House will recall that my department received a specific request under the Freedom of Information Act to release the transition risk register, which covers risks relating to the development and implementation of our health reforms. There was also a separate request to release the strategic risk register, which covers the most important risks the department faces.

We have taken the view that the information in both registers should be treated as exempt from disclosure under Section 35 of the Act on the grounds that the information contained in the risk registers is integral to government policy-making. Risk registers of this sort are a tool by which information about potential risks—both actual and theoretical—can be recorded in worst-case terms to enable them to be mitigated and managed. The Information Commissioner accepts that the information falls within this category of exemption. Following our decision not to release the registers, the two individuals who made the FOI requests lodged appeals with the Information Commissioner.

In early November, the Information Commissioner published his decision notices in both cases, deciding that the public interest lay, on balance, in full disclosure of both registers. Since then, as is allowed for under the rules, we have been considering whether we should appeal the Information Commissioner’s decisions. As I explained to the House previously, this was not a decision that the Department of Health could make on its own, as the issues which bear upon the decision have significant implications for every government department.

While the principle of openness is one to which we have adhered to the maximum extent through evidence given to the Health Select Committee in another place and the publication of impact assessments, it has been our firm view, and that of other departments, that for risk registers of this type to fulfil their function, civil servants must be free to think the unthinkable and record potential risks and mitigations fully, frankly and with absolute candour, confident in the knowledge that this information will not be publicly disclosed.

The logic of the Information Commissioner’s decision to order the release of information of this nature would entirely undermine the concept of safe space for these sorts of circumstances. The matter has accordingly been the subject of much careful consultation across Government, and a very clear and firm view has emerged that the publication of information in risk registers of this type would be likely, in the future, to undermine the very purpose for which a risk register of this sort is produced, and thus directly threaten the successful implementation of government policy. I can, therefore, tell the House that my department has decided to appeal both decisions by the Information Commissioner.

I would, however, like to respond to the request made on 16 November by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, by sharing with the House as much further information as I can about what my department’s transition risk register contains. On that occasion I undertook to examine whether there were any risks covered in the Department of Health transition risk register that are not already in the public domain and on which information could be provided without further ado.

While I cannot share the detailed breakdown of the information recorded in the risk register, or the wording, I am happy to set out for the record the broad issues covered by the transition risk register. They are as follows: how best to manage the parliamentary passage of the Bill and the potential impact of Royal Assent being delayed on the transition in the NHS; how to co-ordinate planning so that changes happen in a co-ordinated fashion while maintaining financial control; how to ensure that the NHS takes appropriate steps during organisational change to maintain and improve quality; how to ensure that lines of accountability are clear in the new system and that different bodies work together effectively, including the risk of replicating what we already have; how to minimise disruption for staff and maintain morale during transition; how best to ensure financial control during transition, to minimise the costs of moving to a new system, and to ensure that the new system delivers future efficiencies; how to ensure that future commissioning plans are robust, and to maximise the capability of the future NHS Commissioning Board; how stakeholders should be engaged in developing and implementing the reforms; and finally, how to properly resource the teams responsible for implementing the changes. I hope that this information will prove useful to noble Lords as the Bill continues its passage in Committee.

[Baroness Thornton]

I thank the Minister for that statement, of which I did not have more than two minutes’ notice. It is very disappointing indeed. Basically, the noble Earl is saying that the Government are choosing what they do and do not disclose to the Committee on this matter. It is an issue of trust—whether or not we can trust that we will know what we need to know to make judgments about whether this Bill will work.

I thank the noble Earl for the issues that he has decided that the Government can let us know about, but of course I am therefore concerned about what the issues are that the Government have decided that we should not know about. What are the risks that we cannot know about? That is a matter of grave concern to the Committee.

I shall be looking in detail at the Minister’s statement to the House and I reserve the right to return to this matter if I feel that we need to. For example, during the last two days in Committee I put two direct questions to the Minister about whether certain matters—one concerning children—were on the risk register and what the register said about them. I have not received answers to either of those questions. I shall continue to put my questions in that context and I suggest that other noble Lords do the same.

I am very grateful for the Statement as far as it goes but I do not think that this is an end to the matter. I can see why the Government might think that there is a cross-government issue here. However, no other department is in the position in which we find ourselves here—that of discussing a Bill that is going through the House right now. We need full information on this matter in order to be able to make proper decisions but I believe that we still do not have that. Therefore, I thank the noble Earl so far as this goes but I reserve the right to return to the issue in due course.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may ask the Minister a question. He gave us a list of all the areas which he thought it was not possible for Parliament to scrutinise in some detail. Did the Information Commissioner have access to all the document headings to which the Minister has referred, and did he have the opportunity to read all the documentation under those headings? If the Information Commissioner did have access to information on, for example, the handling of the legislation as it goes through Parliament, why did he, throughout the whole report, repeatedly say that these matters should be placed in the public domain? Again, is it not clear that the Government are trying to hide something from Parliament? The Minister’s first reference was to the handling of the legislation by Parliament. Why should not Parliament see what considerations took place within the department concerning how legislation should be handled as it goes through this House?

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Our family’s three experiences of childbirth are sadly not unique; what is on offer in our hospitals’ maternity services is quite varied. It is really important that the interests of the mother and child are paramount and centre stage at this important moment of life, and that they have real choice in the provision of maternity services. My colleagues and I created one of the first LIFT companies in the United Kingdom, in east London. It has now built 10 health centres in the East End. One of those new health centres, on the Isle of Dogs, has a birthing suite in it and the quality of care that the midwives give to mothers is excellent. Indeed, the then chairman of the LIFT company reminded me recently that one local East End mum had described the birthing suite, based in a local East End community, as being like a “bleeding hotel”. This is the quality and choice of services that patients deserve and for this reason, I support the amendment.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, perhaps I may speak to the amendments in this group which are in my name. First, Amendment 110A concerns NICE guidelines and is very much like that tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Newton and Lord Butler. In fact, theirs may be even better than mine so I intend to say no more than that we are interested in the Minister exploring this issue, because those noble Lords both more than adequately covered the points that need to be made in that regard. I am also very pleased to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Royall and to put my name to those, because the role of specialist nurses is extremely important.

Amendments 118, 119 and 120 concern the duty of the board to reduce inequalities. Proposed new Section 13G of the 2006 Act states that the board must,

“have regard to the need to—

(a) reduce inequalities between patients with respect to their ability to access health services;

(b) reduce inequalities between patients with respect to the outcomes achieved for them by the

provision of health services”.

This seems a rather narrow definition concerned solely with health services, which I assume flows from the continual and overriding responsibility of the Secretary of State for tackling health inequalities. I would be grateful if the noble Earl could confirm to the Committee how the Secretary of State intends to tackle health inequalities—what information he will need, where he will get it from and how those decisions will then be moved through the proposed structures of the National Health Service Commissioning Board, the CCGs and so on.

Surely, the health and well-being boards would want to have some involvement from the NHS on health inequalities, so Amendment 118 seeks to ensure that the board has health inequalities in its remit. I particularly refer the Minister to the letter from the NHS Future Forum to the Secretary of State on 17 November where it devoted much attention to the NHS role in improving public health and made its claim that the NHS must design its services in a way that both promotes good health and prevents poor outcomes. It is thus important that the legislation provides sufficient leeway to allow the NHS Commissioning Board to do this and that legislation relating to health inequalities is not confined solely to the provision and commissioning of services.

What is also important, in coming to my Amendment 119, is that funding to the clinical commissioning group reflects the deprivation levels within its area. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether there has been a risk assessment on the issues of funding? What risks has the department found that go with the levels of funding that might be made available on the basis of deprivation levels within areas?

Of course, the decision of the Secretary of State not to make clinical commissioning groups area-based is a serious problem in ensuring a population base for commissioning, but it will be doubly important to ensure that clinical commissioning groups with large numbers of deprived patients receive financial support. I would be grateful if the Minister could spell out the intended principles behind the funding associated with clinical commissioning groups.

On Amendments 110B, 127ZA and 190AA, which concern maternity services, the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has adequately covered the major concerns about those services and we would be keen to support her amendments. I am grateful to the Royal College of Midwives for its briefing on these amendments. My only questions are about maternity networks and the recognition of their potential contribution to the type of maternity care and providing clinical commissioners with expert guidance and advice on driving up standards.

The Committee will be very pleased to hear that I do not intend to share any birthing stories. On the other hand, I am concerned. Without a national standard for maternity services, how will the new commissioning arrangements avoid significant variations? We know, for example, that there is a significant variation between trusts in the number of home births that take place. We can explore the reasons for that, but I would like to know how the new structures would deal with such variations and how that would be reflected in the work of the National Health Service Commissioning Board.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I have Amendment 112 and 113 in this group. I have a comment regarding the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and would like the Minister to reply to it. NICE has suggested that all women expecting babies could have the right to consider the possibility of a caesarean birth. Before the choice is finally made, will that be associated with advice from doctors indicating that caesarean births are certainly not as straightforward as some people believe them to be, and for cosmetic reasons may be deeply regretted afterwards? I was a little worried that NICE had given this green light, as it were, to caesarean births without associating it with any form of counselling to the mothers concerned, not least because, as many people in this House will know, the outcomes in terms of morbidity and infant mortality are not as good as people imagine them to be in comparison with a normal birth. Perhaps the Minister could say something about that. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, could also say something about it when she responds on her useful and important amendments, to which I hope the House will give an extremely warm welcome.

Amendments 112 and 113 are about strengthening the language about health inequalities. On that issue, we have had a helpful letter from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, dated 24 November, in which he sets out in detail some of the steps that will be taken, not least the creation of the Institute of Health Equity, to deal with health inequalities. My question is rather a big one but it boils down to the old problem of how one ensures that these worthy and excellent intentions are actually carried out.

The House will remember that new Section 13F of the 2006 Act proposed in Clause 20, which deals with the autonomy of clinical commissioning groups from the Commissioning Board and restricts the board’s actions in terms of having to bear that autonomy in mind, was put into a different set of considerations—the consideration of the whole of the responsibility of the Secretary of State and the responsibilities of the boards—under the headings of Clauses 4 and 10.

All of this means that we are still debating these issues without being clear about where responsibility for them ultimately lies. I do not propose to go over that ground again, but it is appropriate for this debate to notice that the whole set of duties that are laid out in detail—and to which this debate will undoubtedly add as it lays down further duties for clinical commissioning groups and the board as a whole—in a sense therefore depends upon the outcome of those discussions about the constitutional structure. That matters because we need to bear it in mind all the way through our consideration of the duties that are laid upon clinical commissioning groups.

What makes me, to be honest, even more concerned is that I recently read the discussion paper The NHS: Developing Commissioning Support, which was quite improperly, no doubt, leaked on the internet. My attention was drawn to it by a couple of doctors who had access to the internet. The paper sets out in detail the ultimate objective of moving towards a commercial market in the health service and sets it out under a considerable number of different headings. For example, there is a specific mention in this report that,

“Clinical commissioning groups will have a statutory freedom to secure the commissioning support from wherever they want”.

It goes on to say that the commissioning support should be given in a vibrant, commercial market. What worries me about all this is that I am not at all clear—and never have been in our long debate on health—about what the ultimate goal is. I suspect that we are discussing two things at the same time. One is the attempt to keep improving the existing NHS, sometimes by an extraordinary degree of micromanagement—from this House, I have to say. The other is the determination of many people in this House to ensure the safety and continuation of the NHS which is free at the point of need and which is available to people regardless of their ability to pay. Somewhere along the line and at some point, we really have to be clear what we are talking about. I do not know whether others taking part in this debate share my sense that we are walking in without knowing the constitutional responsibilities and quite where we are going.

I commend my two amendments. They both strengthen the words on equality of health outcomes. I congratulate the Government very much on establishing the Institute of Health Equity and carrying forward the detailed research we are now doing on lifestyles and many other things, which are important and which I am sure the whole House will applaud. However, I have to raise the big question about destinations. I hope that at some point before we abandon the Committee stage, we will have a clearer view about the Government’s ultimate destination: whether it is to retain an NHS; whether it is to make it more open to innovation and other contributions from the private sector, with which many of us would certainly not disagree; or whether the ultimate outcome is to move towards a commercial market system, this being essentially a transitional stage.

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I do not intend to follow that in a similar style. I support Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to which I have added my name. I do not want to go over the ground covered by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, but I just wish to share with the Minister in particular and the House in general my own experience from introducing near-miss reporting in the NHS when the National Patient Safety Agency was established. In those good old days the figure was around 800,000 a year. The current figure, as my noble friend Lord Patel said, is of the order of 3,000 a day; it is on an upward incline.

The issue at stake in those days was not the principle of trying in effect to copy the airline industry and improve safety by having people come clean about near misses—some very serious, some less serious. No one disputed the merits of trying to learn from those experiences. Where everybody got a little concerned was around the making public of the information. I will not delight the House with some of the discussions that took place in Richmond House about whether the first lot of information should be made available, because who knew what the Daily Mail would do with it? Noble Lords will be pleased to know that the Daily Mail behaved in a predictable manner and ran screaming banner headlines about how near to death 800,000 people came each year.

The important point was that one was beginning to change the culture of the NHS, which knew that the information was being put in the public arena. The problem with the Bill is that it leaves to the board the decision about how to disseminate information. We as citizens would be better off putting in the Bill the specific organisations to which the information should be disseminated—which is what the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, does. I strongly support it and hope that the Minister will give it very careful consideration, and will carry on the publication and dissemination of the information on an agreed basis.

I will make a couple of remarks in response to the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about a market in commissioning skills. I have no particular wish to promote a market in commissioning skills. However, as a former Minister responsible for the performance of primary care trusts, I say that many trusts seriously lacked commissioning skills. These were lacking particularly in areas such as collecting information, analysing it and using it to establish need and to procure services to meet those needs. We should not in the Bill do anything to limit the ability of the new clinical commissioning groups to receive and acquire the skills to enable them to do their job effectively, wherever the skills may be located. That is a very important part of introducing successful new arrangements for clinical commissioning.

I pray in aid of that approach the history of Dr Foster. The dear old NHS had been collecting data for decades but was unable to use them effectively to improve performance. It took an outsider coming in—Dr Foster—to use the information and turn it into something that was useful to the NHS in terms of improving its performance. We should not be too hung up on precisely where clinical commissioning groups get their skills from to do their job.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I forgot to speak to my Amendment 137A. I will make three points. The first is not about my amendment. I say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on the issues that are the subject of all the amendments to Clause 20, and of the debate and discussions that we are having in the Chamber and outside it about the mandate. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and my noble friend Lord Harris that there is clearly an issue about information and confidentiality that must be addressed before the Bill leaves the House.

I will also say how much I agreed with the orphan amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Mine, too, is something of an orphan amendment but is rather important. Amendment 137A states:

“The Board must ensure that in relation to its duties under sections 13C to 13N, those persons in the private sector contracted to provide health services must contribute in the same way as public providers towards the achievements of those duties”.

Those duties are to do with the NHS constitution, effectiveness, quality, reducing inequalities, patient involvement, patient choice, innovation, research, integration, and the impact of those services. It is very important that we have clarification that all providers have a duty to promote those.

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Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

128A: Clause 20, page 18, line 24, after “provision” insert “and commissioning”

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, we move on now to discuss innovation and research. The amendments in this group are very important and were prefigured to an extent by the discussion we have just had. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and me, is modest in some ways. However, it strengthens the promotion of innovation in the provision and commissioning of health services. Taken together with the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Warner and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, it strengthens the Bill significantly and in a very important way.

We have come to what seems an intractable problem: how to encourage innovation in the NHS. This is part of the Minister's area of responsibility and was also part of the area of responsibility of my noble friend Lord Warner when he was a Minister. I look forward to both of their contributions on this matter.

We know that often, the taking up of great innovation is a painfully slow, complex and bureaucratic process. Our amendment strengthens the promotion of innovation through commissioning as well as through the provision of health services. I would like the Minister to explain why that should not be possible—because it would strengthen and help innovation—and also how it could be done, because we are looking for incentives to promote and spread innovation throughout the NHS.

Last week, the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Ribeiro, and I, with others, enjoyed a dinner and an evening with organisations and businesses to discuss how to ensure that innovation is disseminated, promoted, supported and invested in throughout the NHS so that both the NHS and UK plc benefit. The point was made during the evening that often we do not talk about sophisticated issues but about simple changes to nursing practice, such as the way dressings are done, or to information management, that nevertheless can have an important impact on patient care and progress.

I will not speak further on the amendments because I will be very interested to hear what other noble Lords speaking to their amendments in the group will say. I hope that the Minister, with his passion in this area, will give us some comfort on the matter. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 129 and 129A in the group. First, I will take up the point made by my noble friend Lady Thornton about the long-standing problem of the slowness of the NHS to take up innovative ideas, and the frustration often felt by people in this country who have invented new approaches and created new innovations, only to find that they have had to go abroad to get them projected, promoted and sold, with the NHS being one of the last to take up the innovation, which was often funded in one form or another with public money by the British taxpayer. It is a long-standing problem and not a party-political issue; it has been a challenge for successive Governments. One of the most embarrassing moments one has as a Minister is when one meets foreign delegations or travels abroad to back Britain and is asked, “Has this innovation been taken up in the NHS?”, whereupon one has to shuffle one’s feet and think of a suitably weaselly form of words to avoid answering the question directly. It is a very long-standing and difficult issue.

Amendment 129 draws attention to the importance of the procurement of goods and services in the promotion of innovation, and to the duty that that places on the national Commissioning Board. There are many reports about the importance of public procurement in advancing innovation and in ensuring the take-up of UK inventions and innovative practices. The latest one was by the Science and Technology Committee of your Lordships' House, of which I was a member. The report brought out some of the dilemmas around using procurement to take forward innovation. Yet again it cast doubt on central government's use of their purchasing power and muscle to drive the take-up of UK innovations in public services.

The NHS is not alone in having this problem, but it is part of the problem and it is a big part of the public sector. A major and long-standing problem is that too many purchasing decisions are taken too far down the organisational food chain, with too little intervention at senior level and too little willingness to use large-scale purchasing to spread the use of innovative approaches. Whatever else the national Commissioning Board has, it has a lot of financial muscle. It must use that, through the NHS’s purchasing capacity, to drive innovation, which often comes from publicly funded research. I hope that the Minister, who is well aware of the issue, will see the sense in putting something like Amendment 129 in the Bill. We cannot say too often that public procurement is a way of helping to establish and drive innovation in the NHS.

Amendment 129A seeks to add the idea of an innovation fund to the board's armoury on innovation in new Section 13K. There is nothing novel in this. The amendment continues and builds on the proposals of my noble friend Lord Darzi, which led to regional innovation funds that strategic health authorities currently manage. Again, we need to strengthen the mechanisms in the Bill for driving innovation in an NHS that historically has been slow to take up innovations and apply them to scale for the benefit of patients. We are not talking about huge sums of money in the innovation fund, but relatively modest amounts in relation to the scale of NHS expenditure. However, an amendment of this kind would ensure the continuance of the useful work that has been started by the strategic health authorities following the promptings of my noble friend Lord Darzi.

It is typical of what we sometimes do in this country. We start an initiative with a fund at strategic health authority level and then shuffle the cards so that somehow, along the way, some of the initiatives and their benefits get lost. I hope that we can get some reassurance from the Minister that some kind of innovation fund will be available so that we can continue the work that my noble friend Lord Darzi so ably started to ensure that patients can secure the benefits of UK innovations.

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[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the NHS has a long and proud track record of innovating and delivering better care for patients. That must continue—we all agree about that. That is why new Section 13K of the 2006 Act places a duty on the board to promote innovation when exercising its functions, including innovation in the provision of services and the,

“arrangements made for their provision”.

That last phrase means the commissioning of services. As a result, although we completely sympathise with the principle behind Amendment 128A, it is not necessary. The duty is intended to support the delivery of quality and productivity improvements across the NHS to help transform healthcare for patients and the public. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I say that I expect that innovation in procurement of goods and services will be an essential part of this. The duty certainly allows for it as it stands. It is an important part of the QIPP programme at the moment, and I am sure that it will continue to be. If we were to specify one area of activity in which the duty should be exercised, as Amendment 129 suggests, we would face the perennial problem of listing those areas where the duty should be exercised to the detriment—

[Baroness Thornton]

I am sorry to interrupt, but it strikes me that if none of us understood that that was what those words meant—that was what led us to table the first two amendments in this group—maybe the Minister should look at those amendments, because they offer more clarity.

[Earl Howe]

I am always keen to accept the wise suggestions of the noble Baroness, and I will of course go away and consider the words that she has proposed.

I was just referring to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on procurement, and saying that we would face the perennial problem of listing those areas where the duty should be exercised to the detriment of those not listed.

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[Earl Howe]

I recognise that and, after what I said a moment ago, we know that procurement can be an important lever in the innovation agenda. Indeed, that will be recognised in the innovation review, which is due to be published next month. Furthermore, we are planning to launch a procurement strategy by April 2012. I will not go into huge detail about it, although I have it here, but it will consist of three elements—system levers, standards for procurement and system level support. We can look to take forward some of the ideas that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, put forward in his speech.

All this goes to show that there is a substantial amount of work already under way to create the right conditions for innovation to flourish. These include dedicated regional innovation funds to support front-line innovation and innovation challenge prizes to recognise and reward ideas that tackle some of the biggest health and social care challenges facing the NHS and in future. I have named only two from a long list of current initiatives.

I will just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that the Secretary of State already has a power to awards prizes. New Section 13K of the 2006 Act, inserted by Clause 20, simply gives the board the same power. Should it choose to use the power to make payments as prizes—and it is a power rather than a duty—this is one way in which it might decide to promote innovation in the provision of health services. Recently I presented the very first group of innovation challenge prizes, and it was a very heart-warming and exciting occasion.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, rightly made the point that the NHS was slow to take up innovation and that people were forced to go elsewhere to take their new ideas forward. Again, this is an issue that we are tackling with considerable energy in the NHS chief executive’s review of adoption and diffusion of innovation, which will be published next month. I look forward to talking more to the noble Lord about what is in that review in due course.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, in particular that the main way in which the board will collaborate with research funding bodies is to fund the treatment costs of patients who are taking part in research funded by government and research charity partner organisations.

The existing innovation funds were not put in primary legislation; there is no need to put a specific power in the Bill, as Amendment 129A seeks to do, to enable the board to establish an innovation fund. As with prizes, establishing innovation funds is only one way in which the board might seek to exercise its duty to promote innovation; innovation funding is being considered as part of the chief executive’s innovation review.

Amendments 130 and 131 reflect the similar and previously debated Amendments 39 and 41 on the equivalent duty on the Secretary of State in Clause 5. I agreed to undertake a closer consideration of that duty and I shall do that. I reassure noble Lords that our discussions will include the board’s duty. Work is under way to look at these duties ahead of future stages of the Bill. Indeed, I undertake to reflect carefully on the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, and to write to her with answers to her questions. I have also written to all noble Lords who spoke in that earlier debate, picking up points that I was not able to cover at the time. I explain in that letter how public health falls within the definition of the health service, which was one of the points touched on by the noble Baroness. It will therefore be covered by the existing duty on the board to promote research in proposed new Section 13L of the 2006 Act.

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke about the role of the tariff in promoting innovation. He is absolutely right to do so; the new tariff could indeed play a key role in encouraging innovation. The Bill introduces a new, independent, transparent and fair pricing system where the board and Monitor would collaborate to set prices for NHS services. That would create a more stable and predictable environment, allowing providers and commissioners to invest in technology and innovative service models to improve patient care. We are actively looking at the way in which the tariff could drive that.

My noble friend Lord Willis and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked how exactly the board will go about promoting research. As previously set out, we will make sure that the systems and processes for commissioning used by the board and clinical commissioning groups ensure that research is promoted, supported and funded by the NHS. That will include the tariff, the commissioning guidance and the processes for authorising and supporting development of clinical commissioning groups. However, noble Lords will be aware that a great deal of the practical detail of the board's role is still under development. Further detail will be published in due course and we must respect the autonomy of the board in devising for itself how exactly it will undertake this function.

I turn to Amendments 147, 149A, 150, 215 and 218. Given the wide range of statutory duties placed on the board and CCGs, the approach we have taken in the Bill is to emphasise a few key duties that the board must look at—in particular, in its business plan, annual report and its performance assessments—and that CCGs must, in particular, look at in their commissioning plan and annual report. We feel we have chosen the right duties to emphasise, not because they are the most important but because they are duties about which any annual report, business plan, commissioning plan or assessment should provide explicit evidence, specifically linked to the exercise of the board’s or CCGs’ functions.

That said, with respect to clinical commissioning groups I say to my noble friend Lord Willis that the department has published Developing Clinical Commissioning Groups: Towards Authorisation and that, to be authorised, a CCG will need to demonstrate that it has in place the systems and processes both to promote patients’ recruitment to and participation in research, and for funding the treatment costs of patients taking part in research, so this will not be overlooked. However, we are clear that an annual report, business plan, commissioning plan or annual assessment should provide an assessment of all the body's functions, including the exercise of its innovation and research duties. There is also nothing to prevent the documents going into significant detail about the exercise of a specific duty. I add that the board has the power to issue guidance to CCGs on the contents of commissioning plans and directions as to the form and content of the annual report. I hope that those remarks are helpful in answer to the questions and points from noble Lords, and that they will be sufficiently reassured by what I have said not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Thornton]

I thank the Minister for those remarks and all other noble Lords for theirs. This has been a very high-quality, expert debate. I do not want to delay noble Lords from their supper and, indeed, on this side, from an opportunity to defrost—we have hypothermia on this side. The Committee has again shown its great expertise, commitment and enthusiasm to innovation and research and there is great consensus across the Committee about this. This suite of amendments would have given practical action and voice, and would have strengthened this part of the Bill on innovation and research. We need to look at what the Minister has said. I am grateful for those areas where he said that he would reflect upon these issues and let us know. However, it is safe to say that because of the consensus in the Committee on these issues, we would all be keen to make sure that the issues of innovation and research are, indeed, put beyond doubt in this Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 128A withdrawn.