UK Parliament / Open data

Health and Social Care Bill

As the noble Lord points out, I stood against him as a paper candidate—a non-serious candidate. When I went up to congratulate him on winning by about 2,000 votes to my 20 or whatever it was, I was given a blasting in relation to the successful campaign of one of my colleagues. That apart, I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and I am very happy to discuss these amendments wherever they come in the Bill. However, I would point out that these amendments are about HealthWatch England and we will return to local healthwatch organisations later on. I gather that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, will not be here at that point so has flagged up some issues which I hope to be able to address. But noble Lords may wish to be aware that we will be coming back to this in relation to the local aspects. This has been yet another high-quality debate and a range of different perspectives have been expressed. One of the things that has come through is the concern about trying to make sure that the NHS is genuinely patient-centred. All too often, patients are expected to fit around services, rather than the other way around, and that is what we are seeking to tackle here. Years back, I was a very junior spokesperson on health for the Lib Dems and then I moved to international development. I remember the debates on this issue, in particular on the National Health Service Reform and Health Care Professions Bill in 2002. It is one of the things that I asked about when seeking a briefing. Various noble Lords have referred to what has happened over the years. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said in 2002 when he put forward proposals to involve patients. After they had gone back and forth and around and about and there had been much discussion, he described his position as being, "““as good as it gets””.—[Official Report, 13/6/02; col. 419.]" The noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that they now had a system, "““which will act robustly in the interests of the public and patients””.—[Official Report, 13/6/02; col. 430.]" I very much welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, recognises that we are trying to improve on things.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
732 c982-3 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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