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Health and Social Care Bill

I support the group of amendments. Getting service users and carers involved in the day-to-day practice of what the commission does is so crucial. To take on board their expertise—we now talk about expert patients, because they very often know more about their conditions than we do as professionals—their experience and how they are treated in services is crucial to being involved on a day-to-day basis in how the commission works. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, have clearly outlined what dramatic changes we have seen in mental health services and in social services, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, from a much more adventurous involvement than is envisaged at the moment in the Bill. We have to get something more ambitious in it, to make sure that the new commission really will be at the cutting edge and will truly involve people, because that makes a step change in the way in which services develop and respond to service users. That is what it is all about. I am not sure about the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I envisage lots of future episodes of ““Casualty”” with people filling in forms and sending them off to one commission or another; I hope not. There will never be a time when all those comments get accepted and remarked on as perhaps they should. The involvement in the work of the commission is utterly crucial, and is possibly more crucial than the first group of amendments, although they, too, are important. This will give service users what they need.