As Rhun ap Iorwerth implied, I do not support the amendment that now appears in his name. But I support the aim of ensuring that health service managers are competent and capable and that those who fail cannot just move on to another job elsewhere in the system.

I do not agree that amending this Bill to create a new corporate body and a complex and bureaucratic system of registration is the right way to do that. Of course, that isn't just my view. The health committee, in its Stage 1 report on the Bill, recommended the Government bring forward proposals in the future to address the regulatory imbalance between clinical staff and non-clinical managers, but recognised that this is not a matter for this Bill.

Just as in extending the staffing duties that we discussed earlier at all levels would not be appropriate, that is exactly the same point here. Members may want to consider the actual wording of the amendment they're asked to pass. It starts off by saying that

'Regulations must provide for the creation of a register of clinical and non-clinical managers'.

The next subsection refers to all persons:

'All persons who carry out managerial roles within or on behalf of a Local Health Board, NHS trust or Special Health Authority must be registered on the register of managers.'

And Members should consider the scale of what you're being asked to agree to. So, who is a manager? Well, a band 6 nurse, a deputy ward manager—the clue is in the title. To then say the scale of activity on band 6 upwards right across our service, so that all the clinicians call them that, who have their own professional requirements as well, and all of the non-clinical managers—we have to run a huge undertaking. And I raised this point in the Stage 2 committee debate, that creating a specific and prospective regulatory regime would need detailed financial and policy work to be considered to reflect the diverse nature of the workforce and their roles. We'd need to address the issues about the balance of responsibilities between the employer and the regulator, how any requirements apply to individuals or healthcare professionals and managers, and the mobility of the workforce, which is a key consideration for us in many parts of the national health service in Wales. The care and the thought required is simply not available to us and it is simply not the right way to try and amend this Bill, to introduce such an enormous undertaking.

Additionally, in terms of the value-for-money measures, we of course can't have any idea about what that is now, but we do understand some of the complexity of the level of bureaucracy and the demand. When we established Health Education Improvement Wales, the cost for establishing that was around £2.8 million. I couldn't tell you today what the cost of implementing and agreeing this proposal means just for the implementation stage, never mind the operational stage. It's not just the cost, of course. I've already referred to the challenge we have about the fact that managers and staff do regularly move across borders.

Now, I do want to hear the findings of the working group set up by NHS England to consider the recommendations of the Kark review, an independent review of how effective the system in England is at preventing unsuitable staff from being redeployed. That called for a central database of all NHS directors, but even within England they recognised it's complex, and something they may not be able to achieve on a single-nation basis. Now, they recognised the complexity of issues and they themselves want to have a conversation on a four-nation basis. I am more than happy to participate in a four-nation conversation about the sorts of services that I think are worth pursuing, not just for Members in this room but for the wider public. But as for the amendment before us today, it is not simply the appropriateness of dealing with it, but I think the way it's drafted makes it defective and not something that any Member should support.