---

Health and Social Care Bill

had given notice of her intention to move Amendment No. 196: 196: Clause 123, page 77, leave out lines 27 to 34 The noble Baroness said: I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 198 to 203 standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Stern. Amendment No. 196 was referred to during the discussion on a previous group of amendments and therefore I am addressing only Amendments Nos. 198 to 203. The amendments are suggested by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The purpose of the amendments is to amend the proposed emergency procedure for the introduction of health protection regulations to allow for increased parliamentary oversight. This meets the Joint Committee’s concerns that the current emergency procedure is based not on any defined emergency but on the relevant Minister’s opinion that there is a need for urgency. This assessment could lead to the health protection regulations enabling the detention, isolation and quarantine of individuals without parliamentary authorisation for a significant period of time. The committee expressed its concerns that the proposals in the Bill could lead to emergency health protection regulations, enabling compulsory medical examinations, detention, isolation and quarantine, coming into force in late July, for example, just at the start of the long Recess, and that these would remain in place until November without the need for parliamentary recall. This was noted in the committee’s 12th report at paragraphs 1.42 and 1.43. In their response, the Government explained that they understood the committee’s concerns but that, "““the urgency provisions could be equally used for non-intrusive measures such as setting up a surveillance system for a new disease. It would be necessary to start the surveillance as a matter of urgency, but it would not be a measure of necessary significance to require the recall of Parliament””." They went on to explain that they would not support a proposal that the amending process envisaged in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 should apply to the urgent health protection regulations, as these could be ““technical”” and based on, "““scientific understanding and advice from experts such as the World Health Organisation and the Health Protection Agency””." The Government explained that they did not think that it would be appropriate for these types of urgent regulations to be amended on a political rather than scientific basis. The Government’s response does not meet the committee’s concerns that these proposals could lead to administrative detention of individuals for potentially lengthy periods of time without parliamentary oversight. While the Government’s response focuses on the need for urgent, basic administrative action based on international advice, it fails to engage with the committee’s real concerns about the public health emergency where detention, isolation and quarantine may be ordered by an as yet unidentified decision-maker. Can the Minister explain why, in the circumstances that Ministers have previously highlighted, such as an outbreak of SARS or Ebola or a similarly life-threatening illness, the potentially draconian steps of enabling administrative detention, isolation or quarantine should not be subject to parliamentary oversight on the same terms as the Civil Contingencies Act? I was not present throughout the whole of the debate on the previous group of amendments and therefore I apologise if this matter was addressed then. The question is: why is there a lesser requirement in this Act than there is in the Civil Contingencies Act? [Amendment No. 196 not moved.]