PUBLIC HEALTH (Hansard, 24 October 1972)

§ Mr. Speed
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
This is a technical, tidying up Amendment. It excludes Section 5 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, 1970, from the list of public health enactments in the Clause. It is necessitated by the fact that the Bill gives power to provide public conveniences to authorities which will not bear the main burden of responsibility under the general run of public health enactments.
All local authorities empowered to provide public conveniences remain under a duty to provide for the needs of the disabled. The effect of the 1970 Act is undiminished.
This Amendment deletes the reference to Section 5 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, 1970, from Clause 175(3)(k). Clause 175 defines the local authorities for the purposes of the Public Health Acts and other enactments including, in subsection (3)(k), Sections 5 and 6 of the 1970 Act. Those local authorities are generally to be the district councils and the London borough councils.
1146 This definition is appropriate for Section 6 of the 1970 Act, which is a regulatory power in relation to public conveniences at certain premises open to the public. It is, however, inappropriate to refer here to Section 5, which imposes duties on all local authorities providing public conveniences; county councils, the Greater London Council and parish councils, as well as district councils and London borough councils, will, by virtue of paragraph 9 of Schedule 14, have such powers.
The deletion of the reference to Section 5 ensures that the local authorities for the purposes of that section will be those within the definition in Clause 256—that is, county councils, the Greater London Council, district councils, London borough councils and parish and community councils.
This is a small, technical and, I hope, uncontroversial Amendment.

§ Mr. George Thomas
I have been hanging on the Under-Secretary's words, and doing my best to keep up with him. Will he be kind enough to explain to me, in my little Welsh approach to the question, whether what he said amounts to the fact that local authorities will not avoid their responsibilities to disabled people as a result of our leaving out the Section, and that he is adding powers to certain authorities?

§ Mr. Speed
That is correct. As I said, all local authorities empowered to provide public conveniences remain under a duty to provide for the needs of the disabled. The effect of the excellent 1970 Act is undiminished.