Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 (Extension) Bill (Hansard, 31 January 1986)

§ Mr. Michael Mates (Hampshire, East)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The House will know that the original promoter of the Bill was my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney), who has now been appointed to the Government and is thus disqualified from the exquisite pleasures of private Members' business on Friday mornings. I know that the House will join me in congratulating my hon. Friend on his appointment and wishing him well in his difficult task at the Northern Ireland Office.
It is most appropriate that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squires) should have taken on the Bill, since he was responsible for the original Act which the Bill seeks to extend. It is a necessary and constructive extension, and I hope that the House will approve its Second Reading so that it can be modified, perhaps only slightly, in Committee.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he is speaking on behalf of the hon. Member whose name appears on the Bill as one of its sponsors?

§ Mr. Mates
I am speaking on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch, who authorised me to move the Second Reading, on his behalf today.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Ray Whitney)
I am happy to respond to the telling speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampshire, East (Mr. Mates), and I associate myself with his remarks concerning the elevation of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney). I recognise the contribution that has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squires) to this important matter.
The Bill seeks to provide for greater public access to meetings of joint consultative committees of health and local authorities, and to related reports and documents. This is a commendable objective, and I wish to make it quite clear from the start that the Government have no objection to the Bill on policy grounds. Joint consultative committees exist to advise district health authorities and local authorities in carrying out their statutory duty to collaborate in serving the community. We would welcome a greater public awareness of the existence and functions of those bodies, and would like to see their proceedings as open as possible. We feel that the degree of public accountability which such openness would entail would 1248 help strengthen the committees and emphasise the importance of their role in successful joint planning that we all seek.
Strengthening the joint consultative committees in that way was one of the recommendations of the working group on joint planning whose report "Progress in Partnership" was published at the end of November. That working group was set up by the local authority associations, the National Association of Health Authorities and my Department to look for ways of improving joint planning. Its establishment was prompted largely by a widespread feeling that over the country as a whole, services would better match the needs of users and be delivered more cost-effectively if all the opportunities for joint planning of services had been taken.
Some time before the Bill was first presented, we were preparing draft guidance to health and local authorities, aimed at implementing the working group's recommendations. We are now in the process of distributing it for consultation. In it, we strongly recommend that the meetings of joint consultative committees should be made open to the public and stipulate that minutes of meetings should always be made publicly available and that the press and the public should be kept informed of progress.

§ Mr. Norman Hogg (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth)
I am interested in what the Minister is saying. I have been trying to persuade the Government that it would be a good idea to include new town development corporations in the Bill's provisions. Will he consider widening the Bill to include new town development corporations?

§ Mr. Whitney
The hon. Gentleman seeks to widen the role of the Bill much further than it is at present drafted, and outside the realm of my Department. I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department of the Environment will have taken careful note of the point that he made.
If the Bill were enacted it would, of course, give the force of law to the recommendation that we have adopted. I am sorry to say, however, that I am advised that technically the Bill is defective. The defect is that the Bill seeks to apply the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 to joint consultative committees. That cannot be done, because the 1985 Act is itself an amending Act inserting provisions in earlier Acts. The Bill would need to be redrafted so as to amend the earlier Acts before its purpose could be achieved.
In the circumstances, if the Bill receives its Second Reading today, it will need to be amended in Committee.
We have no objection to the principle of the Bill. We are keen to heighten the degree of public awareness of the existence and function of the bodies with which it deals.