Clause 14 - Commission for health improvement: constitution
NHS Reform & Health Care Professions
5:45 pm
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire, Conservative)
Personally, I see no harm in involving knowledgeable individuals concerned with the law in any arrangements. I should be grateful to the Minister if he declared his interest as a lawyer. Is the measure simply to make work for lawyers, as he put it earlier?
Under clause 14(3)(c), the CHI's committee and sub-committee members will be known as the Office for Information on Health Care Performance. Why is it necessary to give legislative cover to that office? Will it have a separate budget? What is its legal status? Will it be a separate body within the commission? Will it have the ability to contract? What is the relationship between it and the Office for National Statistics? Will it publish statistics and, if so, what safeguards will there be in terms of the independence and methodology of such statistics?