Standing Committee F
Tuesday 29 June 2004
(Morning)
[Mrs. Irene Adams in the Chair]
9.5 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Miss Melanie Johnson): I beg to move,
That 1. during proceedings on the Health Protection Agency Bill [Lords], the Standing Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.05 am on Tuesday 29th June 2004) meet at 2.30 pm on Tuesday 29th June 2004 and at 9.05 am and 2.30 pm on Thursday 1st July 2004;
2. the proceedings shall be taken in the following order:
Clause 1
Schedule 1
Clauses 5 and 6
Clause 8
Schedule 2
Clauses 9 to 11
Schedules 3 and 4
Clauses 12 and 13
Clauses 2 to 4
Clause 7
New Clauses
New Schedules
Any remaining proceedings on the Bill;
3. the proceedings on the Bill (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 1st July 2004.
It will be a pleasure to welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Adams, but first I propose that the Committee accepts the programme motion. The hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) asked me in the Programming Sub-Committee about the time taken in the Lords. The Lords debated the Bill for just under nine and a half hours, and spent just under four and a half hours discussing it in Grand Committee. By comparison, we propose ample time to discuss the Bill, and do not want to insert any knives into the timetable. The Programming Sub-Committee accepted the motion unanimously.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chairman: I remind the Committee that copies of the money resolution to the Bill are available in the Room. I also remind hon. Members that they should, as a general rule, give adequate notice of amendments. My co-Chairman and I do not intend to call starred amendments, including any starred amendments that may be reached during the afternoon sittings. Clause 1
Health Protection Agency
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Miss Johnson: It gives me great pleasure to welcome you, Mrs. Adams, and your co-Chairman, Mr. Forth, to the Chair. We look forward to both your
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chairmanships. The debate is not high politics, so I trust that we will not give you too much cause for concern and that our debate will be constructive and our demeanour good throughout the proceedings. As I said, the Lords considered the Bill for some nine and a half hours, and suggested several improvements, several of which the Government accepted. The Bill has benefited from those improvements.
Without further do, and given the time frame, I propose very brief discussion of the clause, which establishes the Health Protection Agency. Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 makes detailed provisions for the agency's constitution. I have more details to give, but first I shall ascertain whether Opposition Members want to discuss the clause in more detail before I decide whether to speak further.
Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs. Adams.
This is a largely uncontroversial measure. As with any measures of that nature, however, we have difficulty with some of the detail, some of which we touched on in the Second Reading debate. I very much hope that we will be able to address some of the concerns expressed then.
We kick off with clause 1, which deals with the Health Protection Agency overall. Will the Minister tell us her plans for the body, given the current review on arm's length bodies? We understand that the review will reach its conclusion in July, and many of us are concerned that this body may feature as part of that review. We already know that the Public Health Laboratory Service and the National Radiological Protection Board are listed among the 42 bodies that are being considered. They have already been earmarked for amalgamation with the Health Protection Agency, and we strongly suspect that they are listed because they will count as two bodies that can be removed and counted towards the total number of bodies reduced as part of the review. That is sophistry. I am sure that the Minister would agree with that on reflection.
Twenty of the 42 arm's length bodies have been established since 1997. We confidently expect that a large number of those, having been marched up the hill, will be marched down again in July. Nevertheless, when we are talking about the creation of an arm's length body—as we are, at this stage, one month before the announcement of the review's conclusions—it is appropriate that the Minister should comment on the body and assure us that she does not see that it will be greatly affected. Of course, if we see a reduction in the number of bodies such as the National Patient Safety Agency, that could very well have a big impact on the HPA's constitution, finance, structure and so on. Later, we will touch on those specifics.
It seems rather odd that a month before Ministers will announce the outcome of the review of arm's length bodies, we should be considering this matter and putting structures in place that may be quite fundamentally altered following the announcement of the findings of that review. I would be grateful if the
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Minister could specifically tell us how the review next month will impact on the Health Protection Agency.
At a later stage, we will come on to discuss the functions of the Health Protection Agency. However, I want to put it on record that it is all very well setting up an agency, but if we do not have a clear idea of what it is going to do and, specifically, how it is going to address public health functions, we are no further forward. We were no further forward on Second Reading, and I hope that as we go through the Bill we will get a clearer idea of precisely how the body, with the various constituent parts added together, will improve public health in this country. At the moment, that is a little unclear.
Miss Johnson: The decision to carry out a review of the Department of Health's arm's length bodies was announced to the Select Committee on Health on 30 October 2003, four weeks before the Bill was introduced in the Lords. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health made it clear in his statement to the House on 20 May that we aimed to announce the conclusions of the ALB review before the summer recess, as the hon. Member for Westbury has acknowledged.
I cannot say more at this stage about the outcome of the arm's length body review; decisions on that obviously have yet to be finalised. Indeed, much of it is completely irrelevant to the Bill. However, I can repeat what I said on Second Reading—we do not expect to table amendments to the Bill in order to take forward the findings of the ALB review. I am obviously not ruling out the possibility that the agency might take on extra activities as a result of the review. We have always made clear our intention that the legislation should allow some flexibility over the functions that the agency performs. That is why the agency's functions are set out in such a way.
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we have absolutely no intention to come back with amendments at some later stage in the Bill's progress through this place, nor on its return to another place.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1
Health Protection Agency
Dr. Murrison: I beg to move amendment No. 15, in
schedule 1, page 9, line 8, leave out 'the prescribed number of' and insert 'twelve'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:
No. 16, in
schedule 1, page 9, line 9, leave out 'the prescribed number of' and insert 'six'.
No. 17, in
schedule 1, page 9, line 23, leave out sub-paragraphs (6) and (7).
Dr. Murrison: Schedule 1 is quite a big schedule. It sets out in some detail the way in which the Health Protection Agency will be structured—how it will run, how it will be financed, and so on. We clearly need to get it right. To return for one moment to the Minister's
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previous remarks, I fear that she may be setting herself up as a hostage to fortune. I shall look carefully at the Bill as it goes through its various stages, particularly in the light of the review expected next month, to see whether any changes are required following the expected abolition of some bodies. We shall see.
With this group of amendments, I am trying to address the latitude that the schedule gives on a number of counts. Amendments Nos. 15, 16 and 17 are probing amendments. I suggest that the Bill should specify the number of the categories of the agency's members detailed in paragraphs 1(1)(c) and (d). That is not because I think that there should necessarily be 12 non-executive members or six executive members, but we need to know what sort of size the Minister envisages for such an important body. That is why I have suggested inserting 12 and six and deleting ''the prescribed number'', which is such a number as the Secretary of State prescribes by regulation.
9.15 am
Regulations are tricky little numbers and we should give them to Secretaries of State sparingly. [Interruption.]
The Chairman: Order. I call the Minister.
Miss Johnson: I do not think that the hon. Member for Westbury had finished what he had to say before the phone intervention.
The Chairman: Can we ensure that everyone has their mobile phones switched off and pagers on silent?
Dr. Murrison: The Minister is very kind—saved by the bell. I was coming to the end of my remarks anyway, although it would have been nice for them not to have been terminated by a mobile phone. I think that my meaning is quite clear. I would be grateful if the Minister addressed the consequences of the amendment.
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD): I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Adams, and look forward to participating in the scrutiny of the Bill.
I support the amendments for the intended purpose, which is to probe the Government's views. To be clear, how will the prescribed number of non-executive members be arrived at? Although I would not wish the Bill to specify numbers, there is a case to be answered. What will the mechanism be? Will the arm's-length body exercise a good deal of discretion? Will the Government take an accommodating view about the composition of the board or do they have a clear view? If the Government's view is clear, it should be expressed, so that we know what the outline of the new organisation's governance arrangements will be. If their view is not clear, it will be useful to know what mechanism will be used for coming to a view. What will the balance be between the organisation expressing its opinion about the composition of its board of governors and the Government position?
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