Health Bill [HL]

I shall speak at the same time to Amendments 77, 78 and 80. The amendments can be dealt with very simply. They are all to do with who is consulted on what and when. In new Section 65B(4), before making an order to appoint a trust special administrator, the Secretary of State must consult a number of people. He must consult the trust, any SHA in which the trust has facilities and the trust's customers. No mention is made there of the staff at the trust, and I ask the Minister why that is. No one would deny that the most important people in this equation are the service users—the patients—but we need to remember that there are others with important rights here, and those are the people who work for the trust and provide the services which, in the circumstances envisaged, would be under threat of closure. Those are the people whose jobs are at risk. There is a strong case for putting the staff in the Act as statutory consultees. For the same reason, the staff of a foundation trust deserve to be consulted by Monitor before it gives the Secretary of State a notice that would serve to put the administration process into motion. Again, later on, when the trust special administrator prepares his draft report, provision is made in new Section 65F for him to consult any relevant strategic health authority and the service users, but no mention is made of the staff of the trust. That is wrong. The employees have a highly relevant interest in what the report recommends and their views should be heard. There is another dimension to the consultation issue, which relates to foundation trusts. In new Section 65D we find that, before giving a notice to the Secretary of State that a foundation trust is failing and is likely to continue to fail, Monitor must consult the trust, any relevant SHA and the trust’s service users. I have already mentioned the absence of staff in that list, but in the context of a foundation trust there are surely others with an extremely important set of interests who are not referred to here. The first group is the board of governors—in other words, the group of individuals who are elected to represent the members. We should remind ourselves that the members of a foundation trust are its local owners. The second group not referred to is the trustees of the fixed assets used by the trust. Again, we need to remind ourselves that under Section 51 of the NHS Act 2006 provision is made for trustees to hold trust property on behalf of the foundation trust. We would surely wish to say that these people would have a relevant interest if ever there were a question of their fiduciary duties being affected by the appointment of a trust special administrator. I hope that the Minister will at least wish to give careful thought to these amendments, and I beg to move.