Clause 31 - Designation of priority neighbourhoodsor premises
Health and Social Care Bill
11:15 am
Mr John Denham (Minister of State, Department of Health; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, although I am sure that he would not suggest that health authorities should be unable to take advantage of the opportunity of significant investment in the development of pharmaceutical services in a particular area if that was to the benefit of patients. However, he is quite right to stress that the power should be used carefully. Health authorities should not prolong designations any longer than necessary nor should they designate a location in the first place unless they are actively considering an LPS scheme. If the scheme came to nothing, we would expect them to cancel the designation.
It is difficult at present to be sure what the length of designation is likely to be. It will depend to an extent on the cycle in which we invite applications for LPS schemes, so central Government will have an influence on that if we proceed as we did with PMS in inviting several waves of applications. It is unlikely that the period from applications being formally invited to schemes coming into effect will be much more than a year and could well be less. If substantial capital investment is involved, the time scale might be different, but as the hon. Gentleman recognised, we have taken extensive powers to act if there is any evidence to suggest that health authorities deliberately—or otherwise—are misusing the power.