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Health and Social Care Bill

Whatever the Minister is willing to do or not to do about putting statutory objectives in the Bill, there is a strong case for the promotion of sustainable development to be one of the core purposes for which the commission is required to exercise its functions. Sustainable development is a goal that will endure, whatever Government may be in power. The NHS alone is one of the largest employers in the world. It maintains a built estate of enormous size and is a vast consumer of energy. We need to think of such things as the management of waste, the use of energy and the use of transport. Buildings need to be designed in a way that will last and that will be conducive to the well-being of staff and patients. Procurement should be not just cost-effective but also environmentally friendly. We are living at a time when climate change is never far from people’s everyday conversation. One of the effects of climate change may well be an increased tendency for us to experience extremes of weather, such as the dreadful floods that we saw last summer. The NHS needs to make contingency plans to cope with flood risk and to ensure that services are not disrupted by bad weather. The White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, was clear about sustainability as part of future health policy; indeed, so important is the goal of sustainability within the NHS that I understand that there is now a sustainable development unit operating within the Department of Health. Some public bodies, such as the National Assembly for Wales and the Greater London Authority, already have statutory duties in relation to sustainable development. In their document, Securing the Future, the Government undertook to apply sustainable development duties to new statutory bodies as they are created; the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, mentioned that. Making sustainable development a part of what the CQC is about would encourage it to think sensibly about the use of its own resources, to recognise the need for having a good business case for any proposals that it looks at and to have measurable outcomes in any project that it oversees or undertakes. I have read with interest the section on good corporate citizenship on the NHS website. It says: "““How the NHS behaves—as an employer, a purchaser of goods and services, a manager of transport, energy, waste and water, as a landholder and commissioner of building work and as an influential neighbour in many communities—can make a big difference to people’s health and to the well-being of society, the economy and the environment””." So the department fully recognises the importance of being a good corporate citizen. I hope that the Minister will take the proposal away and look at it carefully.