Clause 5 - Further provision about HPW
Health (Wales) Bill
9:30 am
Mr Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell, Conservative)
These amendments address another clause that appears to be rather generous in the powers that it hands to the politicians in the Assembly. That rather goes against some of the principles espoused yesterday by the Secretary of State for Health in his plans to devolve power into the hands of health professionals in communities in relation to a number of areas of our national health service.
Conservative Members see the establishment of Health Professions Wales as potentially creative. It will be a significant body that can enable and develop the professions in different aspects of health care in Wales. Like other bodies of its kind, it should be strong, independent and health and medicine-oriented. It is the sort of organisation that must be run by people with the professional skills, knowledge and understanding to do the work that the Government have rightly identified as necessary for Wales.
This is primary legislation for health care in England and Wales, set out by the House in its role as deliver of such legislation. Why, then, does the Assembly need the power to abolish the body established by the Bill? There is no obvious or rational reason why the Assembly should want to abolish the HPW. The Government are taking a coherent step in creating a body that should have a long-lasting and central role in the development of health care professionals in Wales, so why the need for powers to abolish it? Once again it highlights the Bill's central flaw.
Broadly speaking, the Committee is agreed that the Bill is a decent set of steps, sensible, based on consultation and welcomed by health care professionals in Wales. That is why the Bill is not controversial and why we are spending relatively little time in Committee. Its main weakness is that in several different ways it hands excessive power to the politicians of the Assembly at the expense of the medical and health care professionals in Wales. I have cited the powers to abolish the HPW as one example.
The Assembly should not be given the right to abolish the HPW on a whim. I broadly accept the Minister's assurance that the Assembly has no intention to do so, but, with respect, the Minister has no crystal ball and cannot predict all circumstances—whether financial pressures or political ideology—in the short, medium or long-term future. Why confer on the Assembly the power to walk into the HPW and sequester assets, people and aspects of its operation? An ambitious Welsh Health Minister, seeking to strengthen his or her Department by gaining greater control over training in Wales, might remove that specialist department from the HPW and bring it into his own Department. The effect would be to destabilise the organisation by ripping out professional skills and economic assets, thereby undermining its financial structure. There is no need to do so, which is why we tabled the amendments to remove these provisions from the Bill.
The Government should have trust in what they are creating. They should not leave it to the vagaries of the Assembly's political will. The HPW should be a strong, independent, professional medical and health care body. Proposals to abolish it only weaken its strength and independence. We hope that the Minister will accept our amendments and remove these provisions.