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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I can certainly reassure the noble Baroness on that score. I warmly endorse the amendment moved by my noble friend and I hopefully anticipate a warm response from the Minister. I shall speak briefly to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornton and myself. In Amendments 217ZA and 217ZM we propose to leave out the chapter on financing special administration cases. The whole field of health special administration, which would apply to non-NHS providers to deal with failure, is highly complex. It would be better for the financial side to have the NHS operating as a risk pool; that could be factored into the work of commissioners as part of dealing with non-NHS providers in their commissioning plans. However, it was not my intention to divide the House on this matter. We also have Amendment 220D to leave out the clause on repeal of de-authorisation and Amendment 221A to leave out the clause on the abolition of NHS trusts in England, as we think that that is unnecessary. But the main thrust of our consideration of this group of amendments is undoubtedly to support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Warner, which deal substantially with most of the significant issues here, and we will not press our amendments.