Schedule 1 - Constitution of public benefit corporations
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
10:00 am
Dr Evan Harris (Oxford West and Abingdon, Liberal Democrat)
I hope for a much shorter debate on this group of amendments.
The amendment seeks to restrict the membership of the organisation to NHS patients of foundation trusts. Those trusts are part of the NHS, inspected by the NHS, subject to NHS standards and, sadly, remain too much under the control of the Secretary of State for Health. The amendment does not extend membership to private, paying patients. They may well be able to become members by virtue of where they live, but they do not require the same franchise rights as NHS patients. It would not be unfair to exclude private patients—I am sure that that will be debated—because, first, they have the option of being NHS patients.
Secondly, given that capacity is limited in every NHS hospital now—as it has been for five years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future—it is unfair that private patients jump the queue and pay for beds. Even if that raises a little money for the hospital, it has never been shown to do so sufficiently in net terms to justify the unethical practice of allowing patients into pay beds when others must wait.
Until the Under-Secretary sorts out the problem of the unfairness and the unethical practice of allowing wealthy or reasonably well-off patients who can afford to ''pay as you go'' to get higher clinical priority than patients without those resources who have waited longer, it is incorrect to say that it is unfair to exclude people from membership of the organisation on the basis of their being private, paying patients.