GENERAL INTERPRETATION, AMENDMENTS AND REPEALS (Hansard, 19 November 1976)

§ Mr. Ennals
I beg to move, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this we may take Lords Amendment No. 68.

§ Mr. Ennals
Amendment No. 68 requires that the quorum of the Board be seven, including deputies, for the taking of any final decision under either Part II or Part III of the Bill. The Goodman proposals suggested that the Board should be independent. It is the Government's view that it would be inconsistent with this aim if the Board had its working arrangements fixed by statute.
The Government believe that the arrangements should properly be left to the Board itself. The Government expect that the chairman and members of the Board will be people of standing who will act responsibly in deciding upon the Board's procedure. Therefore, we reject their Lordships' suggestion that this should be written into the Bill.
Lords Amendment No. 49 removes from the Bill the Secretary of State's power to make provisions in regulations for the quorum and procedure of the Board in relation to applications for authorisations. As Secretary of State I intend to carry out the required consultations on regulations. We have not laid down what the Board's quorum should be, but we would wish to lay down for the benefit of applicants and other interested people the procedures that the Board will follow when dealing with authorisation applications.
The Government wish to provide the Board as far as possible with the independence that was proposed for it in the Goodman agreement. We believe that it would be to the detriment of applicants and other interested people if there were not regulations giving them some indication of how the Board should carry out its work. It is for that reason that the Government also reject Lords Amendment No. 49.

§ Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
The Secretary of State has raised a matter of constitutional importance, because paragraph (d) lays down that the quorum and the procedure should be dealt with by way of regulation. We feel that it is very much better that the House of Commons should deal with this matter and that it should not be delegated solely to the Civil Service. We know that the usual procedure when the Civil Service and the Minister deal with such matters is that they discuss the matter with certain sectional interests completely outside democratic control. As long as we have a democracy, we believe strongly that the House of Commons should deal with this matter and should write into the Bill exactly what the quorum should be.

§ Mr. Ennals
It is not the Minister or civil servants who will decide the quorum but the members of the Board themselves. It is perfectly proper that they, as independent people, should decide that matter. It should not be laid down for them by the House of Commons.

§ Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
That is even worse. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that there were a lazy Health Board. We might find that its members said that only one or two people should turn up. That would be the worst thing possible. In order to ensure that the Board does its job properly, it is only fair that the House of Commons should write into the Bill the nature of the quorum. The Goodman proposals regarded the balance of the Board as being of particular importance. In those circumstances it seems necessary that some view on the exact number of the quorum should be stated.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned that the number of seven was voted on earlier on the first Lords amendment. None the less, I understand that it is perfectly competent to raise this matter again. I hope that it will be reconsidered by the Government. It would be to the satisfaction of those who work on the Board, whoever they may be, for the nature of the quorum to be laid down. If that were done, the Board members would feel obliged to attend and to do their job properly.

§ Mr. Moyle
I beg to move, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Speaker
With this we are to take Lords Amendment No. 51.

§ Mr. Moyle
The amendment seeks to exclude from the regulation-making powers of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State a power to make regulations allowing inspectors to enter premises for the purposes of considering authorisations under Part III of the Bill. I know that this is a sensitive issue and that the House would not wish the Government lightly to propose that inspectors should enter premises unless there were a real need for them so to do. We would not wish to include this power unless it were absolutely essential.
We have considered the matter and have come to the conclusion that the conduct of an inspection under Part III for the purposes of authorisation is essential since a proper assessment of premises in many cases cannot be made except from inside those premises—for example, of the standards of operating theatres, the numbers of beds, and matters of that sort.
I am sure that the House will agree that in these circumstances, therefore, entry for inspection is absolutely essential. I ask the House to reject the amendment.

§ Mr. Boscawen
There was a lot of discussion on this matter in Committee, where the voting was tied, but the House was not given the opportunity to debate it when the Bill came back on Report.
We regard this as a very important matter. Here once again is the sort of statutory requirement of all left-wing Socialist Bills of today—the break and entry clause. We have yet another group of inspectors being given power to come and snoop into the efforts of the private sector to produce alternative accommodation for health care.
As we said many times in Committee, we dislike this sort of thing. If the clause goes through, there will be four sets of inspectors from different bodies under different legislation empowered to 1786 inspect what is going on in a hospital or nursing home.
We object to this because of the amount of time that it wastes and the amount of money it costs. It would appear that the private sector cannot be trusted by the Government to carry out the regulations outlined in the Bill. It is not good enough to create even more inspectors and bureaucrats to see what is being done in the private sector.
I hope that my hon. Friends will feel that it is necessary to vote for the amendment. The second amendment is purely consequential on the first.