Clause 15
Health Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Michael Penning (Shadow Minister, Health; Hemel Hempstead, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 177, in clause 15, page 11, line 36, after ‘it’, insert ‘necessary and’.
It is a pleasure to be dealing with this part of the Bill under your directorship, Mr. Key. You must have done a fair bit of homework in the last 24 hours to be assisting us on the Bill.
This important part of the Bill deals with trust special administrators. The whole area of failure within the NHS is something that needs as much transparency as possible. The good news is that I will not move all the amendments on the amendment paper, not least because I want to listen to what the Minister has to say. Perhaps we can come back to some important areas on Report.
Amendment 177 is important because at the moment the Bill says that the Secretary of State should appoint a trust special administrator only if they consider it
“appropriate in the interests of the health service.”
The amendment would insert the word “necessary” so that it would be not only appropriate for the whole NHS for the Secretary of State to approve such a measure, but necessary.
Those of us with experience of local trusts bringing in turnaround teams and so on have concerns about who these administrators will be. It seems that there is an assumption under the Bill that the administrators will mainly cover fiscal problems within foundation trusts, but that might not be the case. Will the Minister not only address whether he is happy for the word “necessary” to be inserted, which I think would improve the Bill, but give an indication as to who these administrators might be, where they might come from, and the cost implications of their appointment?