Clause 8 - Overview and Scrutiny Committees: Exempt Information
Health and Social Care Bill
5:15 pm
Mr John Denham (Minister of State, Department of Health; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
The clause is essentially about the openness of the business of the scrutiny committee. Under clause 7, the Secretary of State can require the NHS to provide information to the scrutiny committee. So we will use that route to ensure that the necessary information is made available to the scrutiny committee.
The Local Government Act 2000 provided that meetings of the overview and scrutiny committee must be held in public. The Local Government Act 1972 provided for two exceptions to that general obligation: first, where certain confidential information may be disclosed and secondly where the scrutiny committee agrees by resolution of the committee or council that certain exempt information may be disclosed.
Section 12A of the Local Government Act 2000 sets out the categories of exempt information, such as information relating to a particular employee of the local authority or to a person receiving services from the authority. Where a scrutiny committee is discussing NHS matters, for example where it has asked the chief executive of the local health authority to attend, it is possible that the committee may discuss matters that would lead to the disclosure of information relating to the NHS that would not be appropriate to disclose to the public at large, such as information relating to personnel. The function of clause 8 in combination with schedule 1 to the Bill sets out the information that local authorities do not have to disclose at a public meeting of the scrutiny committee.
Where the restrictions on NHS bodies that are governed by the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 are more restrictive than the provisions that now apply to overview and scrutiny committees, we have modelled our approach on the approach in the Local Government Act 2000 rather than on the 1960 Act. The provision for public access to meetings and documents of NHS bodies is more restrictive than is the case for local government and overview and scrutiny committees. We think that the more open and legislative approach to overview and scrutiny committees when they are discussing health service bodies is justifiable. They are local authority committees and should be subject to the same regime of public access whatever the matter under scrutiny. That is the broad thrust of our approach.
The hon. Member for Isle of Wight was quite right to say that I failed this morning to address the specific point about material held by CHCs. It will be necessary to develop arrangements whereby, as a result of the winding-up of the CHCs, the Secretary of State will clearly be responsible for handling those files in the appropriate way. That may require returning information to individuals.