Health and Social Care Bill

I never thought that I would be outflanked on the Stalinist wing of the Labour Party by any Member of your Lordships’ House, but clearly I have that all wrong. I would be happy to strengthen these proposals because I rather share my noble friend’s view that I may be being a little wimpish here, but I was deferring to the elected politicians on this, probably unwisely. I am producing this rather wimpish proposal, but somewhere along the way we certainly have to have a trigger that is independent of the political process. We need some outside facilitation of change with the local people and we have to restrict, to some extent, the ability of elected Ministers to totally undo or avoid taking decisions in this area, possibly as much as my noble friend is saying.