Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)

I must admit that I had hoped that I had answered the question on the sequence of the processes. All I can say, again, is that it is about the whole process going forward, and obviously the costs and benefits will depend on the information that is gathered as we move forward with these principles. If the noble Lord is still not satisfied, this can of course be part of the information that I share with him going forward. Moving on, the regulations set the process that will be followed in preparing and publishing information standards. Following on from that, it is absolutely appropriate for the Government or the body that they designate—such as NHS England—to set information standards for the health and care system to ensure that we have interoperability. As I have said before, we have run a public consultation and published its findings. NHSE has undertaken extensive stakeholder engagement, which will be ongoing. The last thing anyone wants to do is make the changes opaque and difficult to understand. Of course, we have to keep all of this in proportion, given the amount of information we are talking about, and make sure that it is completely relevant and fit for purpose. The overriding conclusion is that we need to create a modern health and adult social care service where systems are integrated and staff have quicker access to patient data, freeing up time that could be spent with patients. Ensuring that information flows between services in the NHS and social care is a prerequisite of a responsive and effective service that meets people’s needs. Mandated information standards will set the technical means to ensure that this happens. I hope the Committee as a whole will recognise that setting these standards to ensure that IT systems and services can share data easily is fundamental to delivering the most effective health and care systems, and will agree that these regulations are practical and proportionate.