Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Newby and Lord Warner

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I strongly support the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Noon, in seeking to promote the role of the not-for-profit sector within the NHS, as indeed I do across the whole of the public sector. They have given reasons why within the NHS, particularly at this point, the not-for profit sector can play a valuable role. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out, there are a number of serious technical problems facing the sector in successfully bidding for contracts, and he has dealt with some of them.

I remind the House that least week Royal Assent was received for the Public Services (Social Value) Bill which requires all procurers, including those in the NHS, to consider the social value of a tender as well as its financial value, in such explicit terms, for the first time. This is one of the pieces of the jigsaw which I hope will mean that the not-for-profit sector finds it easier to successfully bid for business. The Bill lays a requirement on the public sector, but the problem is whether the public sector will implement the Bill and take the provision seriously. It would be relatively easy for it not to.

Therefore, I and other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, who have been supportive of this principle and the Bill, seek to ensure that the Government put in place specific measures to ensure that procurers take account of the Bill rather than it simply lying idle on the statute book. When we debated this issue at an earlier stage in your Lordships’ House, the Minister suggested that it might be possible to refer to this in the draft commission of procurement regulations, and I hope that he will be able to confirm today that that is the Government’s intention.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I commend the Government on making a move in the right direction with these amendments. At earlier stages in the Bill, I tried to raise the whole issue of barriers to entry for new providers of services. This amendment helps in some respects but the noble Lord, Lord Newby, made an extremely important point. How will we know whether the culture has changed not just in relation to not-for-profits and social enterprises but for new providers, sometimes from inside the NHS? There is a deep conservatism—with a small “c”—about how the NHS goes about allowing new players to come into the game. We need the Government to give assurances that they will keep a close eye on this. As I put forward in a previous amendment, they must get Monitor to keep a close eye on the extent to which anti-competitive behaviour by the existing NHS stops new providers from whatever source—not-for-profit, social enterprise, charities, the private sector and from within the NHS—being able, when they offer a better solution to patients’ problems, to make their pitch for an alternative way of doing business.