Clause 1 - Meaning of ''NHS body'' and ''qualifying hospital patient''
Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill
10:32 am
Mr Simon Burns (West Chelmsford, Conservative)
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) rightly said that this part of the Bill—it will become apparent during our proceedings that the same is true of many others—contains several issues on which there is confusion about what the Government intend. That is partly because so much of the Bill will take effect through regulations, rather than through its provisions themselves.
I will not try your patience by elaborating on that, Mr. McWilliam, as there will be far better opportunities to do so later. However, I will say now
that the Bill contains a fundamental flaw; I shall leave aside its content as a whole for now, as we believe that the Bill is deeply flawed. In many ways, it is a mere skeleton that will be fleshed out by regulations that no member of the Committee has seen in advance, so we are somewhat in the dark about exactly what the Government intend to do about the fine detail, through the regulations.
That brings me back to the hon. Gentleman's point about flexibility in the health service. The Bill goes counter to the trend established in previous legislation towards giving greater powers to health trusts, primary care trusts and social services departments. I have welcomed the increasing reduction, in the past decade or so, of barriers between social services departments and the health service in the provision of community care and social care. However, the Bill is centralising, over-prescriptive and controlling, and introduces the concept of fines. The Minister owes it to the Committee to tell us in greater detail what she is expecting—