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Health Bill [HL]

I cannot resist rising on this issue. Having been on the receiving end of many lectures over the years from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about how the Government have created bureaucracy in the NHS, this looks like a crackingly good way of having returns from NHS authorities to show how they have had regard to adherence to the constitution and the handbook. I can now see the returns flooding into a future Government. The noble Earl has rather overlooked the fact that we now have a new regulatory system in place under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, which requires registration and a lot of information on the performance of trusts. We have strategic health authorities monitoring the performance of trusts. We have a complaints procedure with ultimately an ombudsman who is able to respond to those complaints, which will no doubt come in on failure to adhere to the constitution and the handbook. Moreover, we have a parliamentary system in which a Health Select Committee and others can hold to account both Ministers and civil servants on how the work is discharged. How many more systems do we need in this area? We have gone a long way to ensure that people are held to account. This looks to me like a bit of unnecessary bureaucracy.