Committee (5th Day)

Part of Health and Social Care Bill – in the House of Lords at 7:00 pm on 14 November 2011.

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Photo of Lord Warner Lord Warner Labour 7:00, 14 November 2011

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord's flow, but I would like to press him a little further to give us some clue as to his thinking on this. My noble friend Lord Hunt gave us a snippet of history, but there is quite a lot more. We have been through a process where we have come down since 2002 from 300 PCTs to 50 or so PCT clusters. We have been on that journey because we found it extremely difficult to commission services effectively when there are very large numbers of PCTs covering small geographical and population areas. There is simply not the expertise to do that. Could he give the House some clue about where he thinks this is all going to end up? At the moment, in terms of starters for 10, we have about 250 of these clinical commissioning groups. I think it would be helpful to know where the members of his party and others who have argued for this stand on where the journey may end.