Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, the hour is late but I wish briefly to explain why I have added my name to this amendment moved so compellingly by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, whose credentials in this field are second to none.

In Committee it was argued that the Bill, as currently framed, could have serious unintended consequences both for social enterprises and for the wider voluntary and community sector. In my remarks, I want to focus on the wider voluntary and community sector. The basic concern expressed was that staff working on the NHS Commissioning Board, and indeed more widely, would interpret the Bill to mean that capacity building and other measures to support the development both of social enterprises and of voluntary and community organisations would be outlawed. A consequence of this would be to make it harder for charities and community groups, which are often very small with tiny management capacity, to provide the services and support that many people, particularly the most vulnerable and the hard-to-reach, rely on.

I know that many charities and community groups are particularly effective in reaching out to the people whom the statutory sector finds hard to reach and they then can advocate on their behalf and indeed can help provide an authentic user voice in the system. In Committee the Minister gave assurances that essentially these concerns were unfounded and that the Government will,

“ensure that procurement practices do not unfairly restrict the opportunities for charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises to offer health and care services”.—[Official Report, 28/11/11; col. 108.]

When I followed this up afterwards with very helpful officials at the Department of Health, they said that the NHS Commissioning Board would be publishing guidance on this issue for commissioners. That guidance I am sure will be helpful but is it enough? There is always a danger that guidance will not be adhered to, will be misinterpreted or indeed will not be seen.

I want to refer very briefly to my own experience in this field. Until a month ago I was chief executive of the charity Relate. Our local centres which are very small with very limited management capacity found themselves in a commissioning exercise in relation to the talking therapies part of the NHS services. It was not an encouraging experience, to be frank. These local centres often found that potential NHS commissioners would wrongly assume or argue that the local Relate centres would be quite unable to mesh with the NHS’s systems, data, outcomes measurement or requirements. Often this simply was not the case but it reflected a lack of understanding on the part of the commissioners. I know that this has been the experience of a number of other charities both big and small.

In conclusion, this modest amendment would be more effective than simply guidance in preventing these unintended consequences. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s concluding remarks.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, it is with very considerable diffidence that I rise to speak at this hour and for the first time on this Bill. Tomorrow we have, I hope, the Third Reading of the Public Services (Social Value) Bill which I introduced at Second Reading in your Lordships’ House. That Bill will require all public bodies, including health service bodies, to consider the broader social value of tenders when deciding whom to place the tenders with. At one level, therefore, it could be argued that these amendments might not be necessary. What concerns me is what happens after, as I hope will be the case, this Bill passes tomorrow. What change will take place in the health service and elsewhere? One of the absolutely key changes that has to take place is the one set out in Amendment 64B; namely, that weightings must be attached to social value at the point at which companies, social enterprises, charities and so on are submitting their tenders. Unless the procurement regulations are changed to provide for such weightings it will be very difficult to have the kind of change in culture and practice which the Public Services (Social Value) Bill seeks to achieve.

I wonder whether the noble Earl, who has already very helpfully in a debate on a previous amendment committed the Government to giving guidance in respect of one matter, will be prepared to commit the Government now to the extent that the Department of Health would require NHS bodies commissioning services covered by the Public Services (Social Value) Bill to include within the tender document a weighting in respect of social value.