Clause 18 - General powers
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
5:15 pm
Mr John Hutton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
Indeed, but it has certainly stood the test of time. Paragraph 16 of schedule 2 to the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 states:
''an NHS trust shall have power to do anything which appears to it to be necessary or expedient for the purpose of or in connection with the discharge of its functions''.
It has not had any undesirable or outlandish consequences, and I have no reason to assume that it will on this occasion.
There is one other problem with the amendment. Clearly, someone must decide what is necessary or desirable for the purposes of a foundation trust discharging its functions. Generally, it is better for that to be the responsibility of the organisation's management and governors rather than, as the amendment would require, another body. In this case, that would be the independent regulator. The amendment could be interpreted as requiring every exercise of an NHS foundation trust's function to be subject to individual approval by the independent regulator. That would be ridiculous.