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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, as a former general practitioner I very much welcome this amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Walton, has just said, the standard of general practice has certainly gone up enormously since vocational training started. However, a number of my colleagues are not up to scratch. The Royal College of GPs and the BMA would be the first to admit that all in the garden is not lovely. I would ask the proposers of the amendment, and the noble Earl, if he is minded to accept it, how the monitoring system will be set up. As has been mentioned, there are already two different systems in operation to monitor the standards of clinical practice—in fact three, if we take the GMC competence system. However, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, QOF is not a very effective measure. Its standards are set far too low. We have yet to see whether revalidation will effectively identify weak practice. If this monitoring is going to be set up, would it not be sensible to involve the General Medical Council, the Royal College of GPs and the BMA in consultation in designing the performance monitoring system that will be adopted? It could be a very good idea. It is high time that there was a more effective system. Most GPs would welcome it enormously and only a few would regret it.