Member

I accept that these regulations are a necessary and welcome commitment to our shared moral responsibilities, but we must ensure that they come hand in hand with pragmatic planning, so I have three further questions for the Minister concerning the successful implementation of this statutory instrument. First, given the mandatory nature of the risk assessment and monitoring duties, what specific ring-fenced funding mechanism will the department put in place to ensure that individual NHS bodies have the capacity and specialist staff required to execute the continuous due diligence mandated by these regulations? Secondly, how will the accompanying statutory guidance ensure that the definition of “reasonable steps” is proportionate so that we do not unintentionally exclude innovative small and medium-sized enterprises from the bidding process, due to an inability to meet disproportionately high compliance costs?