Lord Deben (Con)

My Lords, I think that we can clear quite a number of these things away by taking one central issue. The big problem about being in government is that it is not a single issue that faces you; it is a whole range of issues, and you have to get a balance between them. When we talk about cost, it is perfectly possible to say that there is a majority of people who want this thing, and there is a majority of people who want that thing. The Minister and the Government have to decide how to share out the money that is available between those things. That is crucial to any decision made by this House. My concern is that we are not facing up to that. This is a single issue being presented to the House as if it can make decisions about single issues, irrespective of the effect of the decision on all the rest of the single issues that people also have strong views about. If you asked the public whether they wanted more money for palliative care, they would almost universally say yes. If you asked the public whether they wanted a National Health Service where they could get an appointment with their GP within a week, they would say yes. If you asked the public whether they wanted a National Health Service where there was someone who could help them through complicated arrangements, they would say yes. The problem for this House is that we have to decide, first of all, what burden these proposals place on the National Health Service, the judicial service and the Government as a whole.