Schedule 1 - Constitution of public benefit corporations
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
10:45 am
Ms Hazel Blears (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (public health), Department of Health; Salford, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman has an intriguing way of illustrating his points with absurd examples. I would not characterise him as an extremist, but he does tend to put forward fairly extreme examples to the Committee.
The NHS foundation trusts will be part of the NHS, and they will be fully funded by taxpayers as a public service. Clause 15, which we will debate later, contains a cap on private patients. It is the only part of the NHS in which such a cap will apply. Therefore, NHS foundation trusts are at the forefront of maximising the service that we provide for NHS patients rather than for patients in the private sector. That is a big step forward for the NHS.
I want to place on record that because the primary purpose of the NHS foundation trust is to care for NHS patients, we expect eligibility for membership of the public constituency, which includes patients, to be targeted at those who have used, or are likely to use, the NHS services provided by NHS foundation trusts.
I sympathise with the sentiments behind the amendment to the effect that there should be services for NHS patients, and to the extension about carers of NHS patients. I do not want to go over the ground that we covered on 13 May 2003 about the definition of carers and how difficult it is to constrain that. Again, we want to leave that matter to local constitutions to introduce in terms of good practice for carers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) was absolutely right when he said that we want to achieve the maximum number of active citizens—we want to be as inclusive as possible. However, the point must be made that NHS foundation trusts are fully funded by taxpayers as a public service and are part of the NHS—that is where we want our major concentration to be regarding the role that patients play in driving services forward. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) said that he wanted to ensure that we concentrate on NHS funds and services for patients in that regard.
I understand from the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon that this is a probing amendment, and I am happy to place on record the Government's acceptance of his points in principle. We want to ensure that all of the people involved—as members of these new organisations—are committed and are part of the whole sense that NHS foundation trusts are embedded within the public services that constitute our NHS.