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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, at the risk of appearing to be wimp of the week in your Lordships’ House, I prefer Amendment No. 2 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and Amendment No. 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, to my Amendment No. 8. They achieve much the same thing without injecting the structural over-rigidity that noble Lords have pointed to. I am not yet totally convinced that we have the best solution, as opposed to a better solution. Perhaps I may address the Minister specifically: given that we are now very much on consensus grounds, might it not be appropriate for the noble Earl to sit down with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and those of us who have expressed a particular interest in this , including the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, to see whether we can find an even better solution to the problem at which these amendments are aimed and introduce it at Third Reading to enable the Bill to go through with a wider consensus than seemed likely at one stage—although it is up to the noble Earl as to whether he presses the amendment to a Division?