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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for not being here when he spoke to his amendment and for wanting to ask the Minister a question that may already have been covered in the debate. It is on the relationship of directors of public health, who are going to be situated in local authorities, with the clinical commissioning groups, which are going to cover very much the same area—although we still do not know exactly what it is going to be. At the moment, directors of public health work closely with primary care trusts. I imagine they will be largely the same people who move to local authorities. However, many of the activities of PCTs concern directors of public health. I am not sure that we have yet agreed on whether the local authority director of public health will have a seat on the board of the clinical commissioning groups in the same area. We still do not know whether they are going to be precisely contiguous and/or whether there will be several CCGs in one authority boundary. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the relationship between local authority directors of public health and the local CCGs.