Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I was very pleased to put my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. He and I have been discussing this for several years from various vantage points of my own, as a Minister and then supporting him in debates in the House. In a way, we lose sight of patients with conditions when we discuss this Bill. We talk about the theories of the clinical commissioning groups and how the relationships will work, the coterminosity of things and all of that, but at the end of the day it is about people who are ill, who have conditions or who are in very grave need of support. That is this group of people—those who have been prescribed drugs in a perfectly normal way by doctors and who then become addicted to them. Several things happen here, which the noble Earl has very eloquently described. One of them is that the NHS seems to find it difficult to distinguish between the addiction of these people and drug addiction for illegal substances. That means that the treatment that is offered is often inappropriate. In a way, this amendment is a test of the efficacy of the Bill. Can this new architecture deal with the problem that is being posed by this group of patients? In a way, I am looking for an answer from the Minister to address that. There is no question that some small progress has been made in support of voluntary organisations and in a few parts of the National Health Service through PCTs, which are of course being abolished, to address this issue, but it is not sufficient. I am worried that that progress is in jeopardy in the transition. How will the transition ensure that what already exists is supported? This particular issue is a special and important one. It is not a huge issue in the framework of billions of pounds being spent by the NHS, but it is very important for those patients for whom it matters and for those in the future. So who will have responsibility for it? At what level will it be addressed? And how will the transition protect what exists at the moment?