Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, there is an additional area which I think means that the provisions in this Bill have to be different from other previous legislation. We face a huge financial challenge across the whole of healthcare, with budgets squeezed in a way they have not been squeezed before. So the potential for conflict of interest will go up as very difficult decisions are made. One can envisage the situation where somebody on the governing body of a clinical commissioning group will have a relative with a certain condition—and I refer back to the example I used previously, motor neurone disease. Say that person needs end-of-life care, and say that is a clinical commissioning group that has decided that it is not commissioning it in its area. There would be a direct personal conflict of interest, because that person would obviously want that care for their relative, but they would need to stand back. With the financial stringencies, the proposed amendments become even more important. While they are probing amendments, I hope the Minister in responding will recognise the importance of this area and agree to come back to it—hopefully, with a Government amendment—at a later stage.