Yesterday most of the afternoon in Chamber working on the Report Stage of the Health and Social Care Bill. I had my name on three amendments in the key group about the future shape of the Care Quality Commission. As Baroness Howarth pointed out, some us started out being profoundly opposed to the principles of the Bill, which we suspected (and in fact some of us still feel this way) is unlikely to be in the optimum interests of the regulation of social care and mental health services but the small group of us from all sides of the House who have been beavering away in all kinds of meetings, with each other, with Ministers, with the Bill team, have come along a journey together and there seems no doubt that the Bill has been much improved as a consequence of our collaborative team work. Lord Darzi responded in very positive fashion to our suggestions and several peers changed their minds while speaking, which is quite rare. There will clearly be few votes, if any, in this one. And party politics hasn’t raised its head once as far as I can tell.

This Bill has been a good example of how the Lords can work quietly and effectively  to improve legislation rather in the manner suggested in that video in Baroness Hayman’s excellent guest blog. We might well be doing something which has an impact on health and social care in a significant way over the next few years but it will never surface in the media. 

Spent time this morning ruminating on what my theme should be for Lord Luce’s  debate next thursday on the future of higher education. I consulted the Principal at St George’s University of London where I chair Council. With so many speakers (over 20 already) it’s likely we will have only 4-5 minutes to make a point. So much easier to ramble on than construct something brief but pithy.