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Health and Social Care Bill

Time does not permit me to explain the extraordinary ignorance of that series of points. First, the Bill sets out that the regulator will have a responsibility to establish a failure regime. In 2003, when the predecessors of those currently on the Labour Front Bench took the health legislation through the House, they said that they would introduce a failure regime, to be implemented by Monitor, in legislation. They never did so. At the moment, there is therefore no proper failure regime. Secondly, European competition law—indeed, competition law—applies in this country. A body was established in the national health service under the previous Labour Government called the co-operation and competition panel, the express purpose of which was to apply competition rules in the NHS. To that extent, all the Bill will do is to ensure that the rules that already apply are applied fairly, consistently and transparently across all providers.