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Health and Social Care Bill

moved Amendment No. 175B: 175B: Clause 123, page 71, line 33, leave out ““A justice of the peace”” and insert ““An authorised officer”” The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I pay tribute to the Local Government Association, which has done a tremendous amount of work on the Bill and has tried to help a great deal. I know that it welcomes the revision of the rather old-fashioned Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, which allows councils to require the disinfection or destruction of articles and premises—everyone knows what they are—to prevent the spread of disease. We are concerned here not with people but with articles and premises. I still wonder why those words have to be deleted. It is clear that the Bill has to be extended to include chemical, biological or radioactive contamination. I point out yet again that I do not understand the relationship between these provisions and the Civil Contingencies Act, where they merge, or who triggers action under that Act if it is felt that the actions being taken under this Bill are insufficient. I am also puzzled about why councils, which for a long time have used experienced environmental health officers to trigger action on these matters, should now have to seek the approval of a JP. Although there seem to be an awful lot of them, most of these amendments would just substitute the words ““an authorised officer”” for ““a justice of the peace”” and ““notice”” for ““order””—an authorised officer would issue a notice rather than an order. Most of the amendments relate to that. The main amendment relates to what would happen afterwards. It is felt by local government that having to get hold of a justice of the peace will cause a lot of delay, although I confess to being unsure about that. Furthermore, the environmental officers in this country are a distinguished body of people and are very capable of knowing when there is an emergency in their area and how they should deal with it. It is a slight insult to them that they have to seek the approval of a JP before they can act. Certainly it could be done afterwards, to get approval for the action having been taken, but I believe that to have to seek approval in the first place is unnecessary. One has only to look at Westminster City Council and how the environmental health officers acted in the case of Alexander Litvinenko. Some 45 sites in London were actually or potentially contaminated by polonium-210. It was a huge undertaking but the officers did it extremely efficiently and the public were very grateful to them for how they acted. Our amendment would remove the reference to ““a justice of the peace”” and replace it with ““an authorised officer”” of a local authority. An ““order”” would therefore be replaced by a ““notice””. Once the action had begun, Amendment No. 178B, which is also in this grouping, would come into action. It involves the local authority officer going along to the justice of the peace to get authorisation for further action. I shall not read out all the detail, as it is clear in the amendment. I beg to move.