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Health and Social Care Bill

I add my support to the amendment. I intend to speak to a number of amendments later, but will say just a few words about why I support this one. I have for various reasons spent a large part of my life in hospital—I will not go into details—but I have seen a lot in hospitals. I am a classic user, having on occasions spent months on end in hospital. My mother is in a nursing home and I try to visit her four times a week. You learn a lot about nursing homes, and she is in a good one, but I visited many nursing homes before I placed her in one. It is inconceivable that people who have that kind of experience are somehow to be loosely represented under the advisory committee arrangements that are set out in the Bill and which were referred to some moments ago. I hope that the Minister, when he replies, accepts that we, the users, are in a particularly difficult position, because most users have no knowledge of healthcare. Most people in a lifetime—I do not know; I have no empirical evidence for this—probably go nowhere near a hospital; only those of us who are less fortunate end up in hospitals. They start off with very little knowledge and go into hospital with very little knowledge. Most people out there have no idea what goes on in nursing homes or care homes; only when they enter them do they begin to learn how things operate. They are confronted by people who are highly skilled and highly articulate and who know the business through and through and know how to answer all the questions. Very often they simply do nothing because they are overwhelmed by the abundance of knowledge that they know they must take on in the event that they wish to make a complaint. There must be far more effective representation of users in the structure that is being created. Furthermore, as we are in effect consolidating efforts in one organisation, and as has been repeated previously, there may well be an emphasis in the work done on areas that do not necessarily encompass areas of social care that might be my preoccupation. I want to see in the structure that is being created a body of people who can more effectively represent the area that may well become the Cinderella part of its functions.