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Health and Social Care Bill

The noble Baroness exceeds even her usual kindness. I thank her very much indeed. I shall be very brief and look forward to reading the rest of the debate. I will briefly repeat the point that I made at Second Reading. I make no bones about it: I should like the Bill come into force in 3013 or 4013, not 2013. I am aware that CSCI, which has given us all such good briefings on this, has called the Bill premature. On that basis, it seems more sensible to aim to postpone its introduction for further consideration than to suggest that this bit of it, at any rate, should not happen at all. Since 2002, we have had a reorganisation of the regulation of social care—probably a justified one. We have also had a re-reorganisation of social care. Now, within five years of starting that process, we are presented with a proposal for a re-re-reorganisation. I do not want to go over all the ground about the cost of reorganisation, although I shall refer to one element in it that was beautifully set out by Sir Ian Kennedy in his speech on the subject that many noble Lords will have read. He is in an even better position than those of us around this table to know about those costs. This to me is a reorganisation of a reorganisation of reorganisation—re-re-reorganisation run amok. We should leave it longer before deciding that the present system cannot be made to work. The objectives of getting social care, mental healthcare and healthcare to work together can be achieved in many ways short of this proposal. I speak as a veteran of the Government’s attempts to get health and social care to work better together in other aspects since the days of the royal commission on which the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and I sat. That is my first point. My second point—if one is allowed to make a non-partisan political point in this House—is as follows. Let us suppose that the Bill goes through as drafted and let us suppose—heaven forfend—that there is terrible problem, which I imagine would be most likely to happen in a home for the elderly, although it could happen in a mental healthcare home, or, indeed, in the NHS. Let us also suppose that there is a plausible case to be made at that time that the reason that the regulator’s eye was not on the ball was that it was busy re-re-reorganising. Usually, accountability in this area is pretty clear. It is the regulator who is responsible for regulating, but in the circumstances that I have described, what is the regulator going to say—truthfully or not? It will say, ““Not my fault. It’s the Minister’s fault. If we had not been busy re-re-reorganising, this would not have happened””. In such situations, it is possible to imagine—heaven forfend—that at the extreme people will have died as a result. I always appeal to Ministers on grounds of principle, but Ministers collectively should think also of self-preservation in this case. It would be a disaster if what I described happened. They would not be able to say that they had not been warned, because they have been warned in both Houses. Ministers should at least pause to consider—although I do not ask for a decision this afternoon—whether this is truly a wise risk to run at this time. I beg to move.