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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for giving me the opportunity to come back on these points. Perhaps I may start in reverse order and pick up the noble Earl’s point concerning an informal process of consultation around the development of regulations and guidance. I may not have been clear enough about the intention. We intend to develop regulations and guidance with stakeholders, and therefore they will be involved in the development of the regulations. At this stage, we envisage that these stakeholders will include the NHS Confederation, the NHS Alliance, strategic health authorities, PPI leads and organisations such Health Link, the Patients Forum, the Long-term Medical Conditions Alliance and even the National Voices initiative, on which everyone here knows I am very keen. So we are planning that the process suggested by the noble Earl should go ahead. Perhaps I may comment on why strategic health authorities should be empowered to suspend PCT PPI activities. This is all about avoiding duplication, and it is important to put that on the record. For example, if a PCT and a strategic health authority are planning to consult on the same matter, the strategic health authority would be empowered to say to the PCT, ““No, you’re not doing that. We’re doing that but it mustn’t be seen that you are not fulfilling your duty in not doing it””. That is the proposal for that power. I turn to the noble Earl’s Amendment No. 219ZAA and the question of the word ““form””. We are very happy to consider the wording and come back to the House. However, because the noble Earl’s amendment is an amendment to our amendment, a little help on how to move these amendments would be very welcome. Therefore, we are definitely prepared to consider his concerns in that regard. We envisage strategic health authorities’ prescribed matters being those set out in the original Clause 242. However, we did not want that list to be exclusive, because the role of strategic health authorities is much wider than that of PCTs, so there may well be a desire on the part of stakeholders to include additional matters underneath that heading. That was our intention: rather than being very prescriptive, we were trying to be less so in order to give ourselves the facility to come back following our informal consultation. I hope that I can clarify why we are removing the word ““consultation””. I am advised that the terminology means ““consultation and involvement””. Therefore, we are not removing ““consultation”” but saying ““and involvement””. I hope that with those clarifications noble Lords will not press their amendments, although I am aware that we may need to do further work on this before Third Reading. On Question, amendment agreed to.