§ Mr. HammondI beg to move amendment No. 37, in page 7, line 36, at end insert—
'( ) Regulations shall provide that no person is required to be registered more than once with the Commission in respect of the same establishment or agency'.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin)With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendments Nos. 54 to 57.
Amendment No. 41, in clause 18, page 10, line 35, leave out "written".
Amendment No. 42, in page 10, line 37, at end add—
'( ) Representations under subsection (1) above may be made in writing or in person and an opportunity shall be afforded to a person served with a notice under section 17 to make representations in person in the manner prescribed by regulations'.Government amendments Nos. 58 to 60.
§ Mr. HammondI see a gathering of Welsh Members who are anxious to move to the next groups of amendments, so I shall try to be brief.
Amendment No. 37 addresses the issue of multiple registration requirements. Because of the architecture of the Bill, establishments might be required to register several times, involving several sets of bureaucratic procedures and possibly the payment of several sets of fees. The amendment would insert into the Bill a provision that where a person registers in respect of an establishment, he will be required to register only once in respect of that establishment, even where it may require to be registered on different parts of the register because of what goes on in that establishment.
Amendments Nos. 41 and 42, in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), deal with an important principle. Clause 18 provides that a person threatened with deregistration may make only written representations. There is an important issue at stake, because deregistration impinges on a person's right to practise his livelihood.
Through the amendments, we are asking for the right to be heard. I am not a lawyer, but the Minister is, so perhaps she will tell me in due course whether she agrees with me. It is a fundamental principle of our legal system that an individual has the right to be heard. In professional misconduct hearings, for example, under the requirements of employment law there is always a right to appear and to plead one's case. It is also a human rights issue, as the right to a hearing before an impartial tribunal is a fundamental part of the European convention on human rights.
No doubt the Minister will tell me that the procedure outlined in the Bill includes a right of appeal to a tribunal after the written representation has failed and deregistration is ordered. That is too late. The damage has already been done by then, and the reputation of the business is ruined. There must be an opportunity for a registered individual to be heard at first instance. That is possible under the Registered Homes Act 1984—the current legislation.
1018 The Minister has in the past relied on a recommendation supposedly made by the report of the Longcare inquiry into a case in Buckinghamshire. That report apparently provided evidence that oral representation procedures had been abused to cause delay. No one condones abuse or delay of procedures, but it is incumbent on the Government to lay regulations ensuring that procedures are not abused. Fundamental and important rights cannot simply be removed because one or two people might be tempted to abuse them.
In any case, on careful consideration of the Longcare inquiry report, it is by no means clear that recommendation 31 supports the Minister's case. It is in fact based on an opinion given by the director of social services of Buckinghamshire on what might have happened had the county council sought to move for deregistration of the establishment in question. In fact, there was no move to deregister, so the issue of delay never arose. If the Minister carefully reads the relevant part of the report, she will find that that is the case.
The evidence on which the Government seek to remove an important right is of the flimsiest nature. I could read out details of the report, but, in view of the lateness of the hour, I shall spare the House that ordeal. None the less, I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically on my argument on an important point of principle.
Government amendments Nos. 54 to 60 are a response to a request made by the Opposition in Standing Committee to make it clear that conditions on registration could be not only varied at a later date, but removed. That means that conditional registration can be cleaned up once the conditions have been complied with. I am grateful to the Minister for taking the time and trouble to put that into the Bill.
§ Ms StuartI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing our attention to the issue covered in Government amendments Nos. 54 to 60. The Bill will be better as a result.
I come to amendments Nos. 37, 41 and 42. Amendment No. 37 adds nothing substantive to clause 11. If an undertaking is an establishment or agency required to be registered under the Bill—for instance, an independent clinic—the person carrying on or managing the clinic will be required to register only once because he or she is providing only one type of service.
§ Mr. HammondMy point is that some establishments provide more than one service, such as an establishment in my constituency that provides respite care for children with cerebral palsy and day care for adults with learning difficulties. I understand that it will have to register twice.
§ Ms StuartThe amendment is intended to provide that there is a need to register only once in respect of a single site or building, irrespective of the different services provided there. That is unacceptable, even if the same staff and premises are used for two different categories of establishment. It will be important to have a separate registration for each.
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Different types of service—for example, an acute hospital and an independent clinic—provide different services and so will need to meet different regulatory 1019 requirements. Applications will need to set out different information so that the registration authority can satisfy itself that standards are being or will be met. I hope that I have made clear the need for separate applications in respect of different categories of establishment. The amendment should not be accepted.
Amendments Nos. 41 and 42 would enable representations to be made in person or in writing when an individual received a registration authority's notice of proposal. The very same amendments were tabled in Committee, but, as I do not want to repeat those debates, I simply say that the Bill will not remove people's right to make representations in person. They will still have the opportunity to appeal to the tribunal, and the Bill merely provides that the registration authority can decide whether to take enforcement action without oral representations being made.
In Committee, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) said that he had been furnished with the view that the Bill's provisions for making representations would not comply with the Human Rights Act 1998. That is not the case: a person will be able to appeal to the independent tribunal and there will be an oral hearing. The authority's decision would not take effect until the tribunal had decided the case, unless the provider's registration had been cancelled under clause 20—the urgent procedure for cancellation. Before that, individuals would have had the opportunity to make written representations to the registration authority before it made a decision. At that stage, a misunderstanding could be cleared up or the authority could decide to take further action.
For the reasons that I have given—abuse of the existing provisions for oral representations in the Registered Homes Act 1984 and prolonging the risk to vulnerable people—I ask the House to reject the amendment.
§ Mr. HammondThe Minister's arguments on amendments Nos. 41 and 42 were unconvincing and she did not address the question of the false premise, on which the arguments made in Committee by the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), depended. I hope that the hon. Lady takes the trouble to consider recommendation 31 of the Longcare inquiry report in detail. Perhaps she will realise that the Government are removing an important right without good cause. However, amendment No. 37—the lead amendment—is relatively minor, so I shall not press it. [Interruption.] If Labour Members are so insistent, we might think again about amendments Nos. 41 and 42 at the relevant point. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.