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Health and Social Care Bill

I am not frightened; I have been using them all the way through my explanation. If I may, I shall go on to explain why we do not want those words where the noble Baroness proposes to put them. The risk with a more general purpose is that it is unclear what would be expected of the new commission and how it would balance that requirement with its primary role in assuring safety and quality of healthcare and adult social care services. We want action from the start. We do not want a long debate about sustainable development; we want the commission to have it embedded in what it is doing. It would be unnecessary, for example, for the commission’s registration and enforcement functions in Chapter 2 to apply to sustainable development. Those functions and powers rightly apply where care service users are being exposed to unacceptable risks or poor-quality care. To illustrate that point, Members of the Committee would not expect the Care Quality Commission to close down a care provider on the basis of its carbon footprint or its poor energy efficiency record. On the other hand, there are perfectly plausible cases where the commission may quite rightly take enforcement action in response to an appalling care record against an otherwise energy efficient service. I use that as an illustration of the problem with putting those words into the clause on the general functions of the commission. It is a question of how to build sustainability into the work at the relevant and appropriate moment. We are not convinced that it is most effective as a general purpose, so I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.