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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 204: 204: Clause 226, page 160, line 24, leave out ““, and review,”” and insert ““for the purposes of their consideration of matters mentioned in subsection (2A), and to review for those purposes,”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, we have a subtle shift of subject to health. I shall also speak to government Amendments Nos. 205 and 207. The amendments deal with the activities to which Clause 226(2) refers. In Committee the noble Earl, Lord Howe, sought to establish that the activity of a LINk to monitor and review the commissioning and the provision of health and social care services was for the purpose of securing and maintaining improvements to those services, and to put a requirement to this effect in the Bill. At the time, in the context of the debate, I certainly agreed that this definition of purpose was a useful and positive indicator of what LINks would do, but improving local services already seemed an explicit, overarching aim of LINks—what would they have been set up to do otherwise? Moreover, in the same clause, we set out that the purpose of the reports and recommendations of a LINk was to suggest how services might be improved. While accepting the intention, we were concerned about needless duplication. I agreed to take the amendment away for more careful consideration and, in particular, to think about whether it could be applied to all of LINks’ activities rather than just one of them. On reflection, we agreed with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that an amendment setting out the purposes of LINks’ monitoring and reviewing of local care services would be particularly valuable—more so than referring to all LINks services as originally thought. I have, therefore, brought forward these amendments, which aim to achieve the purpose that he sought, but without causing duplication. I hope that noble Lords will agree that the revised amendments strengthen and capture the policy intent of the noble Earl’s proposal and set out the specific purposes of LINks’ monitoring and reviewing of local care services in a way which can be clearly understood, commended and followed by LINks themselves. That is what we all want. Explicitly, these purposes are threefold: the standard of provision of local care services; whether and how local care services could be improved; and whether and how local care services ought to be improved. Amendment No. 207 amends Clause 226(2)(d)(ii) to make it clear that the reports made by a LINk may refer to ways in which local care services could or ought to be improved. I hope that the scope of the amendments will commend itself to the noble Earl and that he can accept them. I beg to move.