Clause 50 - National performance data
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
9:45 am
Dr Andrew Murrison (Westbury, Conservative)
The Audit Commission recently published several authoritative reports about data collection in the NHS, and I would be interested to know to what extent the Minister, when drawing up this part of the Bill, has taken them into account. Does he agree that Government bodies need to be consistent on whether they publish data? The Audit Commission, which presumably will have an ongoing interest in what goes on in the NHS and could very well carry out investigations requiring data in the future, must operate to the same guidelines as CHAI. It would be unfortunate if CHAI were required to publish its data in one way and the Audit Commission in another way, especially as they might sometimes be assessing more or less the same thing. I hope that the Under-Secretary will attempt—so far as possible—to ensure that those two bodies behave in the same way.