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Health and Social Care Bill

I thank the Minister for his agreement to take this away and consider it. I have a couple of points in response. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, about the power of lay inspection. In my experience, lay inspectors are far less inhibited about saying what they think than professionals. However, I want to correct what may have been a misapprehension: lay inspectors should not merely be confined to inspection of social care services. I remind Members of the Committee that lay people have often uncovered some of the things which were going badly wrong in the health service. There is a key role for lay involvement in that, which is why I chose to use the word ““engage”” in the amendment; it is perhaps the most important word of all this afternoon. Why? I have been on the end of some wonderful NHS consultations, and I have been consulted and then watched as professionals wandered off and did something completely different. I had been consulted. I may have been involved. Had they engaged? No; not in the slightest. They already had some ideas that they had come in with. The important point for us to remember about engagement is that users are not always right. They are not always fully informed. They are not always aware of some of the constraints under which services are, or are not, provided. They can be, and they have an important part to play in making decisions which are informed on that basis. That is why ““engagement”” is they key word. It is at its most important in mental health, where it is not unknown for service providers and practitioners to develop a sense of their own infallibility and superiority to users over years of dealing with difficult people. I do not wish to delay our discussions any more, but I hope that when the Minister takes the matter away he will take those points into particular consideration. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.