Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Owen Excerpts

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.