Health Bill

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, on taking a leaf out of the book of the Minister in another place and using this legislation as a ship of convenience with which to raise an issue—and good for her for doing so. I shall confine my remarks to the issues surrounding Amendment No. 96A. I have two questions for the Minister. First, can he say what effect the Agenda for Change has had on hospices, where a number of jobs have been subject to the process? These are not jobs which have an equivalent elsewhere in the NHS and the method of assessment has turned out to be rather unsatisfactory. This has had an important and detrimental impact on hospices—particularly on those hospices which are charities and, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said, rely on staff to raise a considerable amount of income, a function which is not generally found elsewhere in the NHS. My second question relates to the issue of commissioning, something which is dear to my heart because of a personal involvement at the moment. There seems to be a correlation between failures in commissioning more widely—and within cancer services in particular—and failures in commissioning of palliative care. Taken together, it usually has the effect that patients in a particular geographical area have very poor care pathways from the moment of diagnosis. Can the Minister tell the Committee what guidance there will be? The Minister is probably bored with the subject I am about to raise but, nevertheless, I shall continue to raise it. On PCT reorganisation, will the new PCTs, as announced last week, honour the contractual commitments of their predecessor bodies? Can the Minister give the Committee a short answer to that question?