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Health and Social Care Bill

I am seeking clarification on the involvement I can have here. Forgive me; it is the first time I have been involved to this degree. I understand from my well briefed friend that we are having a conversation here, and I would like to be part of that conversation, if that is okay. In her contribution, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has made the argument for us going ahead and doing this. She rightly suggested that I am speaking on behalf of an acute trust—primarily, I am—but it is an acute trust that is now into a phase of reconfiguration of services led by the Government’s community view of services being delivered nearer to home. As a result, the discussion that is going on between us and the commissioners, whether they are the PCT, the GPs or independent commissioners, gives us a view that is wider than dealing with what happens inside a hospital. That is the way forward. When I make comments in opposition to the amendment, I do so on the basis that the wider the service goes, the more important it is that the regulator embraces all those services. That is why we are anxious that this should go ahead when it is scheduled to. The very reason why the changes are happening means that there is a time when they should happen, and the schedule reflects that. People want a regulator that looks at what happens in the hospital, but as less and less goes on inside hospitals and more goes on in the community, the regulator should look across all of that. That is why I and the people I have had discussions with—not just from the acute trust but with PCTs and other commissioners and providers—suggest that the sooner we get on with this, the better.