Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Grocott]

I am certain that the House wants to reach a conclusion, but that is a bad way to start.

[Noble Lords]

Lord Campbell!

[Lord Campbell of Alloway]

Thank you very much. I will make one short point. All your Lordships, wherever you may sit in this House, know perfectly well that if this Bill is delayed, urgent requisite reform cannot be used or done, to the detriment of the public. For that reason alone, I oppose this amendment.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am sure that we are about to reach a conclusion. I want simply to make an obvious point which may have been missed. It is that we have had an interesting debate, going on now for the best part of an hour, most of which has not been about the amendment on the Order Paper. I know that this can be disturbing at times, but I would like to remind the House of what it is going to make a decision about—or, perhaps, what it is not making a decision about. It is not making a decision about the freedom of information legislation, on much of which I might find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Wilson. It has many problems and difficulties associated with it, not least for Ministers. Ministers in this Government are finding that, just as much as Ministers in the previous Government did. However, it is not about the merits of the Freedom of Information Act—that is for another time. It is not about the merits of risk registers, good, bad or indifferent, and there are all those categories of risk registers. It is not about the merits of the Bill, where we are considering whether it should have a Third Reading now. It is about the momentous decision that the House must reach shortly: whether the Third Reading of this Bill should be delayed for, in my estimate, three weeks. That is the decision we are being asked to make.

With respect to previous speakers, that makes one or two of their contributions problematic, if not redundant: those who have suggested that somehow it will be very serious, if not cataclysmic, for the health service in this country if the Bill is further delayed. I have not been involved with the debates on the Bill, but it already seems to have been going on for most of my life, as far as I can see; certainly for 12 months. Are we really being asked to accept the proposition that a further three weeks—that is my estimate, and I will come to my question to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in a moment—will somehow traumatise the health service? That is an unsustainable proposition. I would not have voted for the amendment had it not referred to the specific point at the end, which is that the House must be able to reach a decision on Third Reading before Prorogation. That is what we are being asked to do. As we all know, the Queen’s Speech is in May—I cannot remember the date—so Prorogation is not too far away.

I know that the House will not vote on the basis of the point that I am making. The proposition is simple and straightforward, and I cannot believe that it is of the cataclysmic significance that one or two speakers have suggested. I have no doubt that we have reached the stage, which we have all been around long enough to recognise with this kind of legislation, where government supporters just want to get it over with, for which I do not blame them, and the Opposition want to ensure, even at this eleventh minute of the eleventh hour, that they have a few more opportunities to point that this really is a bad Bill—a view held not only by the Opposition but by the whole of the medical profession and, as far as we know, most of the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

The point was not about any length of time that the process of appeal might take. This Motion specifically rules out any delay on that basis. It states that Third Reading should take place whichever is the sooner—when the decision is made or whenever is the final date for consideration of Third Reading before the end of the Session. I put it again to the noble Earl: what is his estimate of the last date that we could consider the Third Reading in time for the Bill to become law in this Session?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I take that to be the meaning of the Motion; in fact, it presents the House will an either/or decision, which if passed, would leave us in an uncertain situation. However, I take it that the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, means that, failing the first alternative, the second applies.

I have discussed the parliamentary timetable at length with my noble friends, as might be supposed. I am advised that in reality there is little time left in this Session, but there is a great deal of business left to complete: the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill is on Report; the Scotland Bill is still in Committee; and we await our amendments to other Bills to come back from the other place, whose own schedule is complicated by the Budget, Easter and the Finance Bill. The clear advice that I have received from the business managers is that to delay Third Reading to await the tribunal’s reasons and a government response would put into serious jeopardy all the excellent work that this House has done to make this a better Bill.

I put it firmly to the House that we need to get on with the Bill. Today is the 25th full day on which we have been discussing it, and during that time it has been greatly improved. There is no major issue in it to which the House has not done justice. Delaying Third Reading would, in my submission, be wrong and wholly unwarranted. We need to get on with it, and the NHS needs certainty—the certainty of the Bill being on the statute book. I therefore urge your Lordships in the strongest terms to reject the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and allow Third Reading to proceed this afternoon.