I'm grateful to the Minister for his statement and for the documents that he's made available to us. Our party will not be able to support the legislation as it stands, but we do appreciate some of the principles behind it, and will look through the scrutiny process to strengthen it where we can because that would of course be our preference, rather than to oppose. 

A brief comment to begin with with regard to a couple of aspects that we can clearly support. The expansion of the patient voice body to cover care as well as health makes a great deal of sense to us; of course, it begs the question as to why one can't give that to the regional community health councils, but I'll come back to that in a moment. And it clearly makes absolute sense that the Minister should be able to appoint the vice-chairs of the trusts in the same way as he appoints the vice-chairs of the local health boards. That could, as the Minister said, help to improve scrutiny. 

If I can turn now, acting Presiding Officer, to our concerns, I'll begin with the issue of legislating for quality. This has always struck me as slightly odd, in that you would assume that we would not have any public services in Wales where we were not intending that the services that were to be provided were of the highest possible quality. And we wouldn't on these benches be, in principle, opposed to that legislation, but in my view legislation has to have teeth. So, I'd like to ask the Minister today: will this legislation for quality introduce a system where there are consequences for individual managers when the failure to deliver quality occurs?

He is, of course, right when he says in his statement that with any organisation the size of the national health service, occasionally things will go wrong. We know that when things go wrong, doctors and nurses can be held accountable and, indeed, dismissed if they fail to deliver the quality of service and the safety of service that their patients have a right to expect. So, will this legislation give more teeth to the Minister to deal with managers when they fail to deliver? We still believe on this side of the house that we need a register for national health service managers, and that there needs to be a way to strike them off just as we can strike off doctors and nurses if they fail to perform. So, I'd be interested to hear from the Minister today whether there is potential capacity within this legislation around legislating for quality to ensure that that individual accountability is introduced.

To turn now to the citizen voice body, I just want to, if the acting Presiding Officer will indulge me for a moment, quote from a patients group, commenting on this legislation.

'Disbanding the community health councils flies in the face of logic. In the case of Tawel Fan, the community health councils were often the only support source of independent help and support—a role they undertook without fear or favour. Taking away the right to make unannounced visits really means removing impartial scrutiny.'

Now, wherever we go with this legislation, I hope that the Minister today will reconsider that clause that would take away the right to make unannounced visits. Whether it is a national body, whether we continue with more local community health councils, it is absolutely essential that those who are responsible for raising the patient voice can turn up at the very point when nobody wants them to. Otherwise, they do risk becoming pointless, and I hope the Minister will give consideration, as the legislation goes through, to changing that.

The Minister will understand, I'm sure, the concerns that people are expressing that this new national body would become remote from the communities that it served. I don't think that's inevitable; I think there may be ways in which that could be addressed, but I wonder if the Minister can tell us today: does he appreciate that that is a meaningful concern, and what consideration has he given already to how that could be addressed? It will, of course, be true, he said in his response to Angela Burns, that there will still be boots on the ground, but the generals directing those boots will be a very, very long way away from the front line if it is a national body. And we will take some convincing that this is the right way to proceed.

The Minister referred in his response to Angela Burns to the appointment process, and I wonder if he can give us further reassurance as to how that will be not only independent but perceived to be independent. At the moment, of course, the Minister appoints half the members directly, but local authorities have an input, third sector organisations have an input, and that means that people have some reassurance that the current community health councils are independent. Nobody, of course, is saying that they're perfect. There are issues around, for example, having enough capacity to be able to employ the best quality legal advice. We believe that that could be addressed by sharing services rather than by creating one new body, but I hope the Minister will acknowledge today that those concerns about independence are genuine and that he will look to address those through the process of the Bill.

I'll turn briefly to Healthcare Inspectorate Wales. I've heard what he said to Angela Burns. We do welcome the work considering giving a different legislative underpinning to Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, but can the Minister tell us today a little bit about what the timescale is for that work? Because it is clear—and we'll set aside for now the issues about resourcing, though those are important, but it is clear that there is a need for Healthcare Inspectorate Wales to be more clearly independent and to be legislatively stronger. I wonder if the Minister can tell us how long he thinks it will take for that piece of work he mentions in his statement to conclude.

Finally, to turn to the duty of candour, now, again, nobody would dispute that that will be a step forward and that that will be an improvement, but I would submit, acting Presiding Officer, that just placing that responsibility on bodies is not sufficient. The Minister in his statement refers to the situation in Cwm Taf. Well, to place on that body a duty of candour would spectacularly be shutting the stable door after the horse has long bolted. We know that, in that situation, either the management of Cwm Taf did not know what was going on, in which case they were incompetent, or they did know and chose not to publish it, in which case they were venal and corrupt. In either case, I cannot see how placing a legal duty of candour upon them would make the blindest bit of difference as to whether they operate properly or not. There are many other things that need to be done. We believe that there is a need to place a duty of candour on staff, to empower whistleblowers. If they have a legal duty and they can say to their manager, 'I have to report what I have seen because I have a legal duty of candour', that could support the legal duty of candour on the health bodies, which we wouldn't disagree with but which we don't feel is sufficient.

To conclude my comments, acting Presiding Officer—I can see that you're looking at me, and probably quite rightly—the intention behind this legislation is clearly good, but as one of my school teachers used to say to me when I was young, 'The road to hell can be paved with good intentions.' We will need to scrutinise this in great detail. And the Minister has already said, and I'm grateful to him for this, that he will welcome that scrutiny. As things stand, there are weaknesses around the duty of candour, I don't know quite what we're going to achieve with legislating for quality if we don't do the other things we need to do, and I'm far from convinced that one national body should take the place of community health councils, which, undoubtedly, do need to be strengthened.