Miss Melanie Johnson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health; Welwyn Hatfield, Labour)

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you, Mrs. Adams, and your co-Chairman, Mr. Forth, to the Chair. We look forward to both your

chairmanships. The debate is not high politics, so I trust that we will not give you too much cause for concern and that our debate will be constructive and our demeanour good throughout the proceedings. As I said, the Lords considered the Bill for some nine and a half hours, and suggested several improvements, several of which the Government accepted. The Bill has benefited from those improvements.

Without further do, and given the time frame, I propose very brief discussion of the clause, which establishes the Health Protection Agency. Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 makes detailed provisions for the agency's constitution. I have more details to give, but first I shall ascertain whether Opposition Members want to discuss the clause in more detail before I decide whether to speak further.

Dr Andrew Murrison (Shadow Minister, Public Services, Health & Education; Westbury, Conservative)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs. Adams.

This is a largely uncontroversial measure. As with any measures of that nature, however, we have difficulty with some of the detail, some of which we touched on in the Second Reading debate. I very much hope that we will be able to address some of the concerns expressed then.

We kick off with clause 1, which deals with the Health Protection Agency overall. Will the Minister tell us her plans for the body, given the current review on arm's length bodies? We understand that the review will reach its conclusion in July, and many of us are concerned that this body may feature as part of that review. We already know that the Public Health Laboratory Service and the National Radiological Protection Board are listed among the 42 bodies that are being considered. They have already been earmarked for amalgamation with the Health Protection Agency, and we strongly suspect that they are listed because they will count as two bodies that can be removed and counted towards the total number of bodies reduced as part of the review. That is sophistry. I am sure that the Minister would agree with that on reflection.

Twenty of the 42 arm's length bodies have been established since 1997. We confidently expect that a large number of those, having been marched up the hill, will be marched down again in July. Nevertheless, when we are talking about the creation of an arm's length body—as we are, at this stage, one month before the announcement of the review's conclusions—it is appropriate that the Minister should comment on the body and assure us that she does not see that it will be greatly affected. Of course, if we see a reduction in the number of bodies such as the National Patient Safety Agency, that could very well have a big impact on the HPA's constitution, finance, structure and so on. Later, we will touch on those specifics.

It seems rather odd that a month before Ministers will announce the outcome of the review of arm's length bodies, we should be considering this matter and putting structures in place that may be quite fundamentally altered following the announcement of the findings of that review. I would be grateful if the

Minister could specifically tell us how the review next month will impact on the Health Protection Agency.

At a later stage, we will come on to discuss the functions of the Health Protection Agency. However, I want to put it on record that it is all very well setting up an agency, but if we do not have a clear idea of what it is going to do and, specifically, how it is going to address public health functions, we are no further forward. We were no further forward on Second Reading, and I hope that as we go through the Bill we will get a clearer idea of precisely how the body, with the various constituent parts added together, will improve public health in this country. At the moment, that is a little unclear.

Miss Melanie Johnson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health; Welwyn Hatfield, Labour)

The decision to carry out a review of the Department of Health's arm's length bodies was announced to the Select Committee on Health on 30 October 2003, four weeks before the Bill was introduced in the Lords. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health made it clear in his statement to the House on 20 May that we aimed to announce the conclusions of the ALB review before the summer recess, as the hon. Member for Westbury has acknowledged.

I cannot say more at this stage about the outcome of the arm's length body review; decisions on that obviously have yet to be finalised. Indeed, much of it is completely irrelevant to the Bill. However, I can repeat what I said on Second Reading—we do not expect to table amendments to the Bill in order to take forward the findings of the ALB review. I am obviously not ruling out the possibility that the agency might take on extra activities as a result of the review. We have always made clear our intention that the legislation should allow some flexibility over the functions that the agency performs. That is why the agency's functions are set out in such a way.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we have absolutely no intention to come back with amendments at some later stage in the Bill's progress through this place, nor on its return to another place.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.