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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I would like to support these amendments generally from the point of view of the tremendous focus that comes on the local public health official when there is an outbreak of ill health—for example, E.coli—which gives people tremendous anxiety. They look for leadership to deal with it; they look to the local official, the local member of the public health team, to do that. The amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, have an important part to play in assuring that the people who are put in that position are adequate to deal with such a situation if it comes along. Fortunately, from time to time there is a quiet spell. Then, all of a sudden, something breaks out that causes tremendous anxiety in the local community. They like to feel that the person who is put into the front line to deal with it has a capacity to know what he is doing and to express himself in a way that enables the community to deal with the thing without excessive scaremongering—but, on the other hand, effectively.