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Health and Social Care Bill

I cannot say whether we have consulted the judges; all I can say is that eight of the current regulatory bodies operate in accordance with the procedure that I have set out. Our consultation suggested that there was wide-ranging support, including, incidentally, from the GMC—the recommendation stemmed from Dame Janet Smith's inquiry into Shipman—which believes that there should be a change from the criminal standard. The other argument, which is probably the clincher, is that if a case against an individual doctor was that serious, the criminal benchmark would apply. For all those reasons, the proposal has a widespread consensus behind it. I cannot say whether that consensus stretches right through the legal profession, but we have a strong enough argument to proceed on that basis.