Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, as ever I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, for speaking in such clear terms to the amendment he has tabled. I am equally grateful to other noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, on both sides of the argument. At the heart of this, I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, is putting forward two propositions. The first is that the Government have concealed the nature of the risks associated with the Health and Social Care Bill and therefore the House has a right to be made aware of what the department's transition risk register contains. The second proposition is that the Government's refusal to publish the risk register is inherently improper under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. In other words, the alleged sin of concealment on the part of Ministers is compounded by an unreasonable obduracy in not complying with the decision of the Information Commissioner and now the First-tier Tribunal. It will not surprise the House to hear that I fundamentally reject both propositions. First, the suggestion that the Government have consciously set about concealing the risks associated with the NHS—