§ Order of the Day for receiving the Report of Amendments read.
LORD ALNESSMy Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received. 1088 In doing so, with your Lordships' permission, I should like in just a word or two to answer a question which was put to me by my noble friend the Marquess of Lothian in the Committee stage of the Bill, and which I promised to answer on the Report stage. My noble friend was concerned about the definition of "nursing home" which appears in Clause 9 of the Bill, and said that the definition
might preclude an individual from receiving a friend or relative in his or her house, in order that better attention might be received there.I have consulted the Department of Health with regard to this matter, and they assure me that it is inconceivable that any local authority in Scotland would take such a view or adopt such a construction of the definition as has been suggested, and that if they did so the Department would at once take it up with the local authority. My noble friend suggested the possibility of putting the word "regularly" in the clause. I am assured both by the Department of Health in Scotland and by the Minister of Health here that it would be a most unfortunate thing if the definition of "nursing home" were to differ on the two sides of the border, and accordingly I should be very slow to adopt such a suggestion. My noble friend will probably be reassured when he is told, as I could tell him were he here, that the Department of Health in England have had ten years experience of the working of the English Act, and that no trouble of any sort or kind with regard to the definition to which my noble friend alluded has been experienced. I beg to move.
§ Moved, That the Report of Amendments be now received.—(Lord Alness.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to, and Amendments reported accordingly.
§ House adjourned at eight minutes past four o'clock.