Clause 19 - Information

Part of Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 6:15 pm on 3 June 2003.

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Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Conservative, South Cambridgeshire 6:15, 3 June 2003

I should like to express the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire for not being able to be present to speak to amendment No. 193.

The amendment is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory. If the intention of the legislation is to lift regulatory burdens and compliance requirements on foundation trusts to help them to do their job, that should be carried forward into clause 19(1)(a). Although the NHS foundation trusts should comply with the general requirements on the NHS to provide information for audit and other purposes, the aggregate of that information should be less than was required of them before they became foundation trusts. That is the burden of the amendment.

Mr. Hutton: I cannot accept any of the amendments, and I shall set out the reasons why. Clause 19 serves two distinct purposes, the first of which is to ensure that the Secretary of State has the information that he needs to set standards, allocate resources and plan provision of health care across the NHS in line with his responsibilities under the National Health Service Act 1977. That means collecting information from all parts of the NHS, including NHS foundation trusts, for national policy development, funding decisions, manpower planning and tracking performance throughout the NHS. Those matters go further than the regulator's specific functions, and it would be inappropriate for the independent regulator to decide what the Secretary of State should have. That is why I am unable to accept amendment No. 23 and the consequential amendment No. 457.

However, it is true that we do not want to replicate existing data collection, and to the extent that amendment No. 193, tabled by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, is designed to minimise data collection, I have a great deal of sympathy with it. However, we want to consider information requirements from NHS foundation trusts as a subset of that required from other NHS bodies. We want to continue the work that is under way to streamline further the information that is required to be sent in to the centre.