Clause 3 - Supplementary payments to NHS trusts and Primary Care Trusts
Health and Social Care Bill
5:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 69, in page 3, line 15, at end insert—
`(5B) If the Secretary of State makes any payment under subsection (5A) above he shall publish details of such payment and the reasons he considered it appropriate to make such payment.'.
I jotted down in my notes that I would open by saying that I certainly did not intend to rehearse the same arguments again. In the light of our exchange over the past 90 seconds, I am tempted to revisit that thinking. It is incredible that the Minister is telling us that the Government have no idea at all on this issue, which is equally relevant and valid in the context of clause 3.
Most of the points that have been raised in the debate on clause 2, which deals with health authorities, apply equally to clause 3, which deals with NHS trusts and primary care trusts. The amendment, which requires the Secretary of State to publish details of payments that he makes and the reasons he considers them appropriate, once again seeks to put some transparency into the system. Under clause 2, the Secretary of State has the power to override the formula and give money to health authorities on criteria other than the funding formula, but in clause 3 the Secretary of State is allowed to bypass health authorities altogether and to pay money directly to trusts and primary care trusts. The issues that were raised in relation to health authorities therefore reassert themselves here and for trusts they are probably even greater.
The Secretary of State can make such payments subject to conditions. From reading the explanatory notes, it is clear that there might be specific conditions on how the money was to be used. The conditions might effectively passport the money going to a trust or a primary care trust to a specific purpose—perhaps to fund payments to members of staff.
In clause 3, the Secretary of State is taking powers to bypass the formula, bypass the health authority and even to bypass the trust or primary care trust by giving it money that could be subject to a specific requirement to use it for a single, designated purpose.