Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, it would be very helpful if the Minister could say something about the proposals with regard to the accounts and financial statements made by CCGs, which will obviously depend a great deal on the guidance from the board. I am concerned that a number of clinical commissioning groups without any great knowledge of how to deal with audit and financial problems will emerge. You could quite quickly see a commissioning group getting into difficulties, not because it was not performing well but because it had very little awareness of requirements relating to information on its conduct in relation to assets and finances that was needed to establish its standing as a proper clinical commissioning group. I am concerned because there is already some evidence of clinical commissioning groups seeming rather unclear about the accounting standards that they have to live by. It is important that the board makes very clear indeed what its expectations are and that it involves, as the amendment would require, the National Audit Office, which will become—and in some ways is already—a fundamental arbiter on the quality and standards of accounting practices. I hope that the Government will consider the amendment carefully and that the Minister will let us know what the Government’s intentions are with regard to setting out the standards that they expect from clinical commissioning groups and that the board should lay down. The Bill is currently uncommunicative on the subject. The whole process of procuring the pharmaceutical and other products that a commissioning group will need is always problematic. It is crucial that what is required is clearly set out, and that there is an indication under which we can compare one clinical commissioning group with another.