RESTRICTIONS ON SECRETARY OF STATE'S POWERS UNDER SS. 1 AND 2 OF 1968 ACT (Hansard, 19 November 1976)

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

§ Mr. Speaker
With this we may take Lords Amendments Nos. 29, 30 and 31.

§ Mr. Moyle
I do not think that the House need be detained long on this group of amendments. Although they touch on an important principle, the House has already passed judgment on that principle earlier today. We do not see any need to extend the grounds upon which the Health Services Board may authorise new pay beds on the ground that the rôle of the Board is to phase out pay beds from the National Health Service. That is the task which it must perform under the Bill.
Some provision has been made for meeting emergencies and short-term and temporary closures. In those circumstances, we feel that there is no need to accept the group of amendments which the other place moved to extend the grounds of the authorisations.

§ Mr. Patrick Jenkin
The Minister will not be surprised that I disagree with almost everything he said, with one exception. I agree that the principle in these amendments was covered by earlier amendments considered in the debates in which my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) took part when we discussed whether new beds should be authorised in place of hospitals which are closed down. The Minister is absolutely right when he says that the principle in this group of amendments is exactly the same. Although we would dearly wish these amendments to be included in the Bill—there is no doubt about that—I am not sure that I should be justified in asking my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide the House on the issue.

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

§ Mrs. Renée Short (Wolverhampton, North-East)
The Minister is slipping.

§ Mr. Moyle
I regret that I do not have 100 per cent. support for my motion. The Government have considered the amendment moved by another place to insert "shall" instead of "may" when it comes to authorising additional pay beds in certain circumstances. We do not intend to disagree with the amendment.
The effect of the amendment is to require instead of to enable the Secretary of State to grant temporary authorisations for pay beds or for private out-patient facilities if a hospital, which is still entitled to have authorised pay beds or outpatient facilities, is temporarily closed as a result of some physical event outside the Secretary of State's control, such as fire, flood, infection, landslide, act of God, or similar event. That means that the total number of authorised pay beds or out-patient facilities at any time will be kept at that level, but not in any circumstances increased, and will not be reduced by any of the emergencies which I have mentioned.
Obviously, as the operations of the Health Services Board proceed and the number of pay beds in the NHS is reduced, the opportunities for authorisation will be reduced. That does not necessarily mean that the authorisations would be operated if the time were short. But there will certainly be the requirement to authorise the appropriate substitute pay beds.

§ Mr. Patrick Jenkin
I thank the Minister for a small, but valuable concession. I am particularly grateful since his noble Friend the Baroness Stedman was very forthright when she said: There really is no reason for making this permissive power mandatory".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10th November 1976; c. 499.] The Minister has shown that he has an open mind on these matters.
It is entirely right to make this provision mandatory. If, for instance, a hospital which has pay beds is burned down or becomes infected and has to be closed by the Secretary of State, he may temporarily authorise pay beds in another hospital to replace them. This seems a necessary requirement. We should not 1754 leave it permissive as it is in the Bill. I thank the Minister for his open-minded-ness on this issue.