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Health Bill [HL]

Before my noble friend sums up the debate, I want to clarify the point about HIV. There is clearly an entirely different understanding on the part of the department and of the HIV charities about the position of staff who are treating people with HIV. The Minister and her officials had a very helpful meeting with me and my noble friend Lady Tonge, during which they explained the point that the Minister made—that clinical decision-making always takes priority over the assessment of whether somebody has proper residence status or the ability to pay. Yet we have this distinction about HIV being a communicable, infectious disease for which people have the right to have a test but not to have treatment. What do clinicians do in that case? They carry out the test, and it becomes immediately apparent that somebody immediately needs antiretroviral therapies, which will not be a cure but will enable him to live. We also know that antiretroviral therapies are comparatively expensive drug therapies in the NHS. If the clinicians work in a trust that has a policy that it will not treat people who are not eligible, what then happens to the individual? It seems that there is a problem here. For most conditions, we can get away with doing it on the quiet and being humane on the quiet, but HIV is the particular problem, and it is different from all the other conditions.