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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, briefly, Amendment 342 is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who will speak to Amendment 343, which I also support and to which I have added my name. Amendment 342 was prompted by the rather slow progress that seems to have been made so far on developing clinical quality standards. I accept that these are very important, so there is nothing between me and the Government on the virtue and value of those standards. However, the rate of progress seems to be about five a year, on the information that I have managed to obtain, and at the present rate of progress it looks to be well over a decade before the exercise is completed—and then, I suspect, the whole process will have to start again because standards are likely to be out of date, and science and clinical practice will have changed. This exercise could become rather like painting the Forth Bridge. I am all in favour of taking care in the preparation of clinical quality standards and of the need for proper consultation to ensure that a spectrum of expertise and discussion is brought to bear on each clinical quality standard. It is important to get clinical support for those standards, but in this area speed is also important if patient care is not to suffer. I wonder therefore whether the processes for preparing these standards do not need some review. It is possible that the resourcing of the work may need to receive some attention. In addition, I believe much work has been done in other jurisdictions—certainly, a lot has been done in the United States—and I wonder whether the Government and NICE could not draw on this work in an effort to speed things up. To buck things up a bit, Amendment 342 requires the Secretary of State to ““agree with NICE”” an annual, "““programme of clinical quality standards to be completed or revised””," in that year. This should ensure that the process and resourcing are kept under review and that faster progress is made. These clinical quality standards are critical to delivering improved quality and efficiency in the NHS at a time of great financial challenge and rapid clinical and scientific advance. We need to press on with their preparation and to ensure that the Secretary of State and NICE give proper priority to this issue. I hope the Minister can agree that an amendment of this kind will help to achieve this. I beg to move.