Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, we are indebted to my noble friend for raising what I think is one of the most difficult issues the health service is going to face. There is no doubt that if the efficiency challenge is to be met, there has to be a major reconfiguration of services. Yet, as my noble friend has said, we know that this is often very difficult to undertake and get local sign-off. Both my noble friend and I enjoyed—if that is the word—experience as Minister for the health services in London, and both of us have been involved in some of the agonised discussions with the outer-lying hospitals and boroughs. The whole London area is littered with proposals that have been made for many years and which have not been put into effect. There are other examples up and down the country. The problem is that the health service no longer has the luxury of being able to rely on the uncertainties that are caused by the current system. Reconfiguration needs to take place, and rapidly, over the next two or three years. I am enormously sympathetic to my noble friend’s amendment. It is interesting that in our previous debates the view has been expressed that ministerial intervention has often caused the problem. My noble friend would still push this substantive decision back to the Secretary of State. That is probably right, because in the end, however much the Government might wish to push this back onto the health service or onto the NHS Commissioning Board, I should have thought that the interest of MPs in reconfiguration issues would have sucked the decision back to the Secretary of State one way or another. We have to assume, therefore, that any process that is put forward does involve the Secretary of State. I have no doubt that the noble Earl will say that we do not need to go down this route and that he is confident that clinical commissioning groups will be able to embrace reconfiguration of acute services and get sign-off from the appropriate or relevant local authority. I am sure that there may be some areas where that might happen, but of course, one has first of all to recognise that if a major reconfiguration is proposed, it will involve a number of clinical commissioning groups. The first test will be whether a number of CCGs will be able to come together to achieve a strategic outcome. Secondly, even if that happens, those clinical commissioning groups have yet to feel the heat of battle. They may well theoretically sign up to a reconfiguration, but they are inexperienced, I would suggest, in the kind of pressure that they will come under from politicians and the public. I suspect that one or two will find it very difficult to hold the line. The other problem with the current proposals of the Government is that clearly they wish the NHS Commissioning Board to have a leadership role. However, the Commissioning Board will have much less legitimacy than Ministers when it comes to controversial decisions such as closures of accident and emergency departments. It is easy to see how these may come, in the end, to little fruition. I certainly support my noble friend. The only question I put to him is whether his process is really tough enough. I wonder whether what really needs to happen is that every area of the country should be reviewed by some kind of independent body as to whether the configuration of services is safe and appropriate. It no doubt could have examinations in public, similar to the old strategic planning process that we have had in the planning system. I would favour a much stronger statutory approach to this, which forces each health economy to come to the table, to put their viewpoint, but then to have an outside group of experts who would then make strong recommendations to the Secretary of State. I fear that without such external views we will find it very difficult to make progress. I suggest to my noble friend that he should consider whether he might need something stronger to make this bite.