---

Health and Social Care Bill

Obviously, I listened carefully to the Minister's arguments, which are not unfamiliar to those of us who had the pleasure of serving in Committee. There is a need to recognise the theme of a long absence of understanding the issue at stake. When community health councils were axed, they were regarded by some as a nuisance, which probably means that they were doing their job. Some were not very good, but the vast majority were perceived as doing a good job. They were seen to be independent and therefore to be trusted by people who needed help when they felt most vulnerable and needed to have their hand held when charting their way through the confusing and labyrinthine process of NHS complaints. LINks are the ultimate successor bodies that we are now faced with. If we could feel that they were being given the necessary importance by being included in the Bill, it would seem that the Government were at last addressing the grave concern that so many of us have about the lack of importance and independence given to representing patients and their concerns, particularly when things are going wrong with the NHS. Most often, those who have a concern about the NHS have a continuing need of it and are most anxious not to get offside with the very people from whom they think they need an immediate and expert public service. Taking the opportunity to demonstrate how much they are committed to patient and public involvement in that way would be the proper manner in which the Government could reflect that commitment. The Government now have a real opportunity to pick up a policy that they have been urged to adopt, but which they again seem to be resisting, and which we have articulated at length elsewhere and now in a draft Bill—I hope that I will be able to persuade the Minister and his colleagues to support the NHS accountability and autonomy Bill, in which we have a designed patient and public involvement system through HealthWatch, a good model that, despite the Minister's disparaging so far, I hope will be picked up. It is vital to recognise—not least because the amendment was not just tabled by the official Opposition, but co-sponsored by Government Members and the Liberal Democrats' spokesman—that the House now has an opportunity to vote, with a heavy heart and some displeasure, against the Government for not seeking to pick up on a sensible, measured and appropriate way of handling such an essential issue. This is an opportunity to ensure that that is well understood in the Bill, and I shall therefore press my amendment to a Division. Question put, That the amendment be made:— The House divided: Ayes 179, Noes 267.