Health Bill [HL]

My Amendment 29 is designed to say much the same as the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, only less prescriptively. Listening to the noble Baroness, I think that her approach might be better than mine. There is a good case for being prescriptive. The central question is not at issue. It is whether the Secretary of State should have an explicit duty to undertake a consultation exercise on any revision of the handbook. My answer, like hers, is yes, he should. Why do I say that? We have touched on some of the reasons already. The handbook explains the NHS Constitution in greater detail and in so doing defines and occasionally limits or restricts the rights contained in the constitution. You cannot understand the constitution properly without also reading the handbook. In fact, the handbook could be regarded as much more of a source document than the constitution itself for practical purposes. The two are, indeed, complementary. Yet in the Bill, as we have already discussed, the handbook has no legal force or standing at all. It is a thing that is referred to but is not defined in any substantive sense. That still seems very odd indeed for such an important document. Surely the very least that we can do is to say that the Secretary of State should be under an obligation to consult key stakeholders whenever the handbook is revised. It should not simply be left to him alone to interpret the constitution, so I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some reassurance.