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Health and Social Care Bill

My name is attached to Amendment No. 10 and I support everything said a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I like the idea of a service user panel because it holds out the prospect of genuine patient and public involvement in the work of the commission. As we debated recently in the local government Bill, and as the noble Lord, Lord Low, effectively stressed the other day, there is an important difference between involvement and consultation. It is the difference between allowing someone to contribute to the shaping of plans from the moment that the initial idea is conceived and allowing a person to comment on those plans only once they are fully formed. The two are not at all the same. Surely, we want a group of people to help and advise the commission from the perspective of the informed service user—people who know what it is like on the ground and who can offer their wisdom to the commission in a measured and reasoned way. I believe that such a panel would be a force for good. It would be the means by which the commission could assure itself that the interests of service users and carers were properly embedded in the work that it undertakes. Leaping ahead to the next but one group of amendments, it would be the ideal conduit for LINks to feed in their views to the commission in a structured and co-ordinated way. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, there are some good precedents. For instance, there is the Ofcom consumer panel, which I understand works well and is influential. There is also the citizens’ council, set up by NICE, which can make recommendations. Above all, there is the service user reference panel reporting to the Mental Health Act Commission, which in its short existence has undoubtedly proved its value. I would argue that there is no more important sphere for service user and carer involvement than in the regulation of care provided to individuals detained under the Mental Health Act. In that context, we are dealing with people who have many of their rights taken away and who find themselves with a need to feel empowered as far as reasonably possible, and able to influence the way in which they are looked after. Without service user involvement, it would be very easy to imagine a culture developing which failed sufficiently to take that dimension into account. My understanding is that direct involvement by service users in visiting activity in the context of the Mental Health Act Commission has been shown to have considerable benefits. The Government have often said that they are keen on user involvement in the regulatory process and I accept that they are. I therefore hope that they will look constructively at this amendment.