Commentary on provisions of Act Section 2: Section 1: supplementary provision
This section confers on the Secretary of State a power to make regulations to transfer charitable property from the trustees of an NHS trust or an NHS foundation trust to that trust, and sets out what further provision the regulations may make and what Parliamentary procedure will apply to them. This power seeks to enable the Secretary of State to ensure that prior to the repeal of his powers to appoint trustees by section 1, and, as a result, trustees’ appointments being revoked, any trust property held by trustees appointed for an NHS trust or NHS foundation trust can be transferred back to the trust for which the trustees were appointed. The Board of the NHS trust or NHS foundation trust would then act as the corporate trustee of that charitable property. This power applies only to transfers from trustees appointed for NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts, (rather than trustees appointed for other NHS bodies) because, in practice, the Secretary of State has only appointed trustees for these two types of NHS body.
	Where the Secretary of State exercises this regulation making power, subsection (2) seeks to ensure that any discretion given to the trustees in legislation is exercisable by the NHS trust or NHS foundation trust following the transfer of the charitable property to them. This provision is subject to subsections (3) and (4) which give a person to whom trust property is transferred under this section the discretion to apply that property, or income arising from it, for "any purposes relating to the health service". This applies even where the terms of the original trust were more restrictive, for example where property was held by trustees wholly or mainly for the hospitals for which they were appointed or for purposes relating to hospital services.
	Subsections (5) and (6) apply the provisions of section 217 of the National Health Service Act 2006 to subsection (1). This enables regulations made under subsection (1) to make provision for transfers of trust property to include rights and liabilities arising from that property, for the effect of any such transfer on third parties, and in relation to stamp duty.