---

Health and Social Care Bill

The hon. Gentleman's expertise is medical, not legal, but those who write the legislation will have to try to ensure that the guidelines are at least very clear. We will have to see to what extent they can be incorporated directly into the primary legislation and in the schedules to it, but I am sure that the House will have noted his declaration of interest in these matters—or not. I will not delay the House on the part of the Bill dealing with public health. On the face of it, the updating is pretty straightforward. The powers requiring people to be quarantined or to submit to medical examination if they are infectious have been extended quite a long way, so we need to ensure that the safeguards exist. I have no doubt that there should be such powers but, taking the wider view, I just wish that we also had public health legislation that helped to achieve the things that we have proposed to create a much stronger separately funded public health service that works with local authorities to deliver better on our public health objectives. The Secretary of State will know that only a third of the dedicated public budget of £300 million that the Government have allocated since the White Paper ““Choosing Health: Making healthy choices easier”” has been spent on public health objectives. He will also recall that Ara Darzi's document on ““A Framework for Action”” in London expressly sets out the fact that primary care trusts spend on public health in inverse relation to their deprivation. For example, Tower Hamlets, which is one of the most deprived areas in London, spends £6 a year on preventive health spending.