Steve Barclay

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Government are spending millions of pounds and there is no plan. The measure was announced without working that out, it came as a surprise to many within the system, and it has had a chilling effect on many decisions. That is not isolated. Just today, we had the complete shambles of local government reorganisation. On the last day before the summer recess, the then Secretary of State rushed to the House to push through an announcement, which the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is now reversing, while the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is contradicting her by saying that the Government want to have a higher legal appetite for risk and fewer consultations. There is confusion across Departments, and the issues with clause 1, which a number of Members have spoken to, illustrate that. Given the time limit, I will turn to clause 6. I do not doubt for a minute that the Health Minister and the Secretary of State—anyone in the Department—want to promote innovation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) spoke a lot about capital to revenue switches in his book, and the pressure that takes away from innovation. As Health Secretary, I used to have a wry smile at the battles I had with him, when I was pushed by the Treasury to do exactly the same thing. The issue is not the lack of will; the issue is the alignment between procurement, regulation and clinical leadership, particularly in the colleges, as well as the ability to scale innovation—it is not about having more ministerial pilots. Finally, because I am almost out of time, I will pick up on the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee’s good points around data. When I was in the Department, my frustration was that I often had to go on open-source dashboards to get information that should have been available to me as a Minister, and I suspect that that is still the case. We should make data dashboards a common theme—the CSV files that the Department publishes are extremely difficult to access. Make data more transparent; it will help the debate in Parliament and, I dare say, it will help Ministers get more support.