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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, briefly but warmly, I support Amendment 11, which seems to me to be desirably explicit and logical in the structure of the opening clauses of the Bill. It is desirably explicit because, while I am sure that the Minister actually wants continuous improvement in the quality of service in connection with the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of physical and mental health, those words do not appear in Clause 2. There remains in the wider public some feeling that mental health has a lower priority than physical health. I believe that there has been a huge improvement in the priority given to mental health—I have a lot of experience of that because of my family circumstances—but the feeling I have referred to exists. Therefore, to be explicit on mental health in this clause is good. The amendment is logical in the Bill because under subsection (1) of the new clause in Clause 1: "““The Secretary of State must continue””," to promote, "““a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement … in the physical and mental health of the people of England””," yet we do not have that phrase in Clause 2, where we come on to, "““improvement in the quality of services … in connection with … the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of illness””." That directly contributes to what is expressed in Clause 1, so we need to carry over that phrase and avoid its omission in Clause 2. That is why I support this amendment.