Clause 7 - Effect of authorisation
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
8:55 am
Mr Simon Burns (West Chelmsford, Conservative)
I want to raise a brief technical point with the Minister because, as he will be aware, clause 7 gives authorisation to the bodies corporate, which are NHS trusts. Its subsections describe the legal authorisation for foundation trusts. If the need arose, is there a mechanism in the Bill, or in legislation generally—I suspect that it would need to be in the Bill—to reverse that process? Such a provision would be required in exceptional circumstances only, but there might conceivably be the odd instance when, for a variety of reasons, a foundation trust might no longer wish to continue as a foundation trust after a time or might become incapable of providing the services and health care that are required for it to remain as a foundation trust. The trust may, therefore, wish to revert to NHS trust status.
My understanding is that that process is irreversible—there is no reversal mechanism. Will the Minister confirm that and state whether it is wise not to provide such a mechanism for the few and, I suspect, exceptional circumstances in which a foundation trust would wish to revert to its former status?