Please join me in writing to members of the House of Lords who vote today
At Third Reading (Final Stage) of the Health and Social Care Bill before the Bill is returned to the Commons, David Owen (cross bench peer) and Glenys Thornton (Labour) will today make a last ditch attempt to ensure that MPs will fully understand the implications of enacting the Bill.
I have written to the Bishop of Birmingham and Lib Dem Peer, Lord Alex Carlisle to ask them to support David Owen’ amendment (Glenys Thornton’s would only come into play if it were to be lost). Below are the emails I have sent and the wording of the amendments. The format of email addresses for other bishops and peers is similar.
To bishop@birmingham.anglican.org
Dear David,
I am contacting you to ask you to support David Owen’s amendment at today’s Third Reading of the Health and Social Care Bill calling on the NHS Bill to be paused until the Department of Health publishes the NHS Risk Register as it has been asked to do first by the Information Commissioner in November and most recently by the Information Tribunal last week. The potential risks of such fundamental reform to such an important part of our health infrastructure are too grave not to be given due consideration.
I am very concerned at the fragmentation of services that will result from the provisions in the Bill – see for example http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/18/doctors-warning-nhs?cat=society&type=article and the risk that EU competition law will come into play once the level of private sector provision reaches a critical point.
I should be grateful to receive your thoughts on this matter.
Dear Alex
You will recall all those reports into homicides committed by people who were not provided with the joined-up mental health services that they needed. Since then, mental health services have been given a higher priority and have improved tremendously but all this is threatened by the fragmentation of services that will occur if the Health and Social Care Bill is enacted. As you know, successful management of chronic conditions requires cross-agency co-operation and so would be put at risk by the widespread introduction of competition into health and social care services. It will be impossible for future governments to reverse such a trend if EU competition law is allowed to come into play – another real risk!
I am therefore contacting you to ask you to support David Owen’s amendment at today’s Third Reading of the Health and Social Care Bill calling on the NHS Bill to be paused until the Department of Health publishes the NHS Risk Register as it has been asked to do first by the Information Commissioner in November and most recently by the Information Tribunal last week. The potential risks of such fundamental reform to such an important part of our health infrastructure are too grave not to be given due consideration.
I should be grateful to receive your thoughts on this matter.
Health and Social Care Bill Third Reading [Earl Howe] 18th and 22nd Reports from the Constitution Committee
Lord Owen to move, as an amendment to the motion that the bill be now read a third time, to leave out from “that” to the end and insert “this bill be not read a third time until the House has had an opportunity to consider the detailed reasons for the first-tier tribunal decision that the transition risk register be disclosed and the Government’s response thereto, or until the last practical opportunity which would allow the bill to receive Royal Assent before Prorogation”.
If the bill is read a third time,
Baroness Thornton to move, as an amendment to the motion that the bill do now pass, to leave out from “that” to the end and insert “this House declines to allow the bill to pass, because the bill does not command the support of patients who depend on the National Health Service, the professionals who are expected to make it work, or the public; will not deliver the promised objectives of genuinely empowering clinicians in the commissioning process and putting patients at the heart of the system; will increase bureaucracy and fragment commissioning; will allow Foundation Trusts to raise up to half their income from private patients; and, despite amendment, still creates an economic regulator and regime which will lead to the fragmentation and marketisation of the National Health Service and threaten its ethos and purpose”.