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Health and Social Care Bill

moved Amendment No. 74A: 74A: Clause 42, page 20, line 29, after ““review,”” insert— ““( ) demonstrate how this judgement will contribute to the Audit Commission’s assessment of local areas,”” The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 74A, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 75A and 75B. I wish to point out something that I have mentioned already on a couple of occasions. No material circulated for the recruitment of the chair of the Care Quality Commission made any mention of comprehensive area assessments, nor did they mention local government. A key driver for the commissioning and provision of social care—although not for its assessment—is the comprehensive area assessment for all English local authorities, which is audited by the Audit Commission. The comprehensive area assessment requires local authorities to state how they will address and improve the social and health outcomes of the population and to make an assessment of the prospects for improvement of health and social care. It monitors closely how well local organisations work together in order to achieve those outcomes. The comprehensive area assessment is key to social care—its planning, assessment and monitoring. Its absence from primary legislation, as with so much of this Bill, appears to be downgrading key parts of social care. Therefore, these three amendments seek to restore that emphasis in primary legislation by requiring local organisations to show how their work will contribute to the comprehensive area assessment. Much of the work that CSCI does is done in tandem with the Audit Commission. In social care those two bodies look at many of the things which affect people’s lives. In a way, this is a redress of that. The other matter which these amendments seek to probe is what exactly is intended by the word ““periodic””. Comprehensive area assessments are annual; the word ““periodic””, when last I looked in the dictionary, is ill defined. It does not state what the period is going to be. What are the periods to which ““periodic”” refers? I beg to move.