My hon. Friend, as ever, makes an extremely interesting and shrewd observation. The truth at the heart of public services is that the taxpayers provide the money and the Government, as best they can, the service. In that loop, something is lost: a direct connection between the recipient of the public service and the point of payment. Most of the recipients of public services have, of course, already paid for them through their taxes, but the sacred moment of the empowerment of the consumer gets lost in a complex chain of public service delivery. She makes the point that we need to look across our public services at how we can restore that moment. I would like more parents and pupils in schools to feel that the choice they make—choosing which school to send their child to—is a choice that the system respects. I wholly welcome the reforms that the Secretary of State for Education is putting in place to that end.
I want to mention health care, in particular, as we are seeing an extraordinary change in modern health care. I do not think it is too profound or bold to claim that health care is going from something that traditionally, in the 20th century, was done to us by Governments when they decided we needed it, to being something that modern consumer health care citizens do for ourselves. We are seeing across the NHS much greater patient demand for information, transparency and choice. We are seeing click health care and modern patients wanting to be able to access information and be empowered. That is all to the good if we want a new generation of citizens empowered to understand what causes disease—how lifestyle, diet and even genomics affect one’s predisposition to disease. We want to empower consumer citizens to prevent disease. We will not do that without empowering them to make choices and receive information. That is why I have a ten-minute rule Bill on the very subject of releasing patient data to patients within the framework of acknowledging that it is their data—our data. By giving patients back their data, we empower them to use them better for public health care.