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Health and Social Care Bill [Ways and Means]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and glad to have the opportunity to point out that, unlike the Government and the Liberal Democrats, despite their assertions, Conservative Members are proud that we have ensured that someone who represents a Welsh constituency will serve in Committee, given that the Bill relates to so many powers that Welsh Ministers exercise in relation to the Mental Health Commission. I am glad to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) will be looking out for his constituents and everyone in Wales in Committee. No other party chose to nominate Welsh Members of Parliament to the Committee. My hon. Friend's question about consulting the professions is crucial to whether we should pass the resolution and whether we should be called upon at this stage to debate it. Such consultation does not apply only to England but to Wales. Has consultation been properly framed and passed on to Welsh Ministers, who will make decisions that replicate, to some extent, those made in England, to apply to the medical profession in Wales? My hon. Friend asked a germane question and I hope that the Minister will tell us the extent to which consultation has taken place with professional bodies, especially the GMC, to establish whether the resolution is the right way forward and whether the professional bodies are looking forward to being a proxy, vicarious tax collector for the Government to recover fees for the new OHPA, the establishment of which has not yet even been agreed. I have a final series of questions for the Minister to enable us to make a decision on the resolution and maintain the proper challenge that my former colleague the former right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst issued on such resolutions. Why were matters not sorted out in time for Second Reading? Why is it suitable for the House to table a Ways and Means resolution on an aspect of the OHPA that neither it nor the Committee has had an opportunity to debate? What assurances can the Minister give that the resolution is not a blank cheque, given the OHPA's lack of independence, which we have already observed in Committee by reference to another body—the care quality commission, which is also being set up—the absence of draft regulations on new clause 7 and of cost control measures in the Bill? The Minister did not mention cost measures when he outlined at the outset of our short debate what he believed to be appropriate. Will the Minister also reassure the House that, in accepting the resolution, we are not creating a huge liability for doctors, optometrists, dispensing opticians, student opticians and optical businesses? How will the resolution operate given the different VAT status of the bodies involved? Why does not the money resolution cover at least part of the resolution that we are discussing? We have an opportunity to test the Government. Are we to be disappointed or are we in for the parliamentary shock of getting genuine answers to key questions, without which the House should not be contemptuously steamrollered into supporting the resolution?