Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

Let me make some progress and we will see whether I have failed to cover the relevant points. Some hon. Members made a point about the difference between inspecting and viewing, but I rather think that this is dancing on a pin head. Patients forums and the proposed LINKs are not inspectors of services in the sense that the statutory inspectorate is. Again, however, hon. Gentlemen cannot have their cake and eat it. They cannot on the one hand complain about intrusion into private life, while on the other allow unfettered access, particularly in the area of social care, but also in respect of medical care. Secondly, we hear complaints about over-intrusion by inspectorates. Assuming that patients forums and LINKs were inspectorates, it would be quite right and proper for them to act as gatekeepers to ensure that organisations were not over-burdened. Indeed, Conservative Members supported that proposal. One of the big themes of debate on the Bill has been the allegation—true on many occasions—that there is over-burdensome inspection. One of the measures that we have put in place is the gatekeeper role, so that the main inspectorate—for local authorities, the Audit Commission—can co-ordinate the other inspectorates. Surely the same principle has to apply to LINKs. The hon. Member for Billericay said that we had wasted £120 million in establishing patients forums and then abolishing them. The £120 million that he quotes is indeed the recurrent costs of the years of activities—not the costs of establishing the bodies, so I think that the analogy is unfair.