Clause 4
Health Bill [Lords]
6:00 pm
Stephen O'Brien (Shadow Minister, Health; Eddisbury, Conservative)
I wish to address subsection (3). What assurance can the Minister give that the Secretary of State will ensure that those who will be consulted will include
“patients, staff, members of the public and other persons as appear to the Secretary of State to be affected by the proposed revision”?
I am not aware of how that will be done objectively. At the worst end, a whole load of yes-men would be selected, who might give the answer that the Secretary of State first devised, and at the other, it would be a completely random unrepresentative body of people. If we are going to have other revisions, it is important that the consultation process is seen to access not only stakeholders and appropriate patient groups. Given the other discussions that we have had in relation to LINks and those in the list in clause 3(3)(a), it is important that some assurance is given, even if only by placing on the record at this point that the selection is intended to be objective, and that there is no possibility of either cronyism or of trying to select the people to consult in order to produce the first answer thought of by the Secretary of State.