§ Dr. WrightTo ask the Secretary of State for Health, for each of the non-departmental bodies sponsored by her Department, whether the public has a statutory right to attend all board or committee meetings and to inspect(a) minutes of meetings, (b) the annual reports and (c) the annual accounts.
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§ Mr. Sackville[holding answer 15 February 1994]: The meetings of regional health authorities, district health authorities and family health services authorities are governed by the Public Bodies (Admissions to meetings) Act 1960. This requires any full meeting of the authority, at which specific action is required, to be open to the public. The public may be excluded from the whole or part of a meeting when confidential business is to be discussed. The 1960 Act also requires authorities to supply the press, on request, with a copy of the agenda for each full meeting. These authorities are not required to publish annual reports and accounts, but many do so, and their audited accounts are publicly available on request.
National health service trusts, and their committees or sub-committees, are not subject to the 1960 Act. Trusts are required to have one public meeting per year, in accordance with the NHS and Community Care Act 1990. They are required to publish annual reports, business plans and accounts.
Other non-departmental bodies sponsored by the Department of Health are not required to hold meetings in public, or to allow the public to inspect minutes of those meetings.
Executive bodies are not required to produce reports but all do so either annually or biennially. Annual accounts are usually published either as part of the annual report, or as a separate document.
Many advisory bodies produce some form of annual report, although they are not required to do so. Most do not produce accounts as they do not have any executive function, and therefore no budget.
"Public Bodies 1993" gives full details of non-departmental bodies publishing annual reports.
Of the tribunals sponsored by the Department, the mental health review tribunal rules state that hearings must be in private, unless the patient requests a public hearing. The decision of the tribunal is confidential, and is made available only to the patient and other parties directly concerned with the patient; the registered homes tribunals are held in private, but the decision of each hearing is published; the NHS tribunals are held in private, and minutes of meetings, annual accounts and reports are not available to the public.