Clause 40 - Short title, interpretation,commencement and extent
NHS Reform and Health Care Professions Bill
2:45 pm
Mr John Hutton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman says that he understands that, but he has repeated the argument that we are using the Bill to rush forward the establishment of PCTs. That is simply untrue. The power to establish them was contained in the Health Act 1999. All that this Bill does in relation to PCTs is to require the Secretary of State to maintain universal coverage of them. The process of establishing them has nothing whatever to do with the passage of this Bill.
We do not want to be swapping prophecies and predictions of the future across the Committee—that would be pretty tedious. If either I or the hon. Gentleman should be proved wrong in future about the passage of these reforms, I have a strong feeling that it will not be me.