Clause 5 - Co-operation
Health Protection Agency Bill [Lords]
10:15 am
Mr Paul Burstow (Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Health; Sutton and Cheam, Liberal Democrat)
I am about to deal with the Minister's comments on my amendments. It will be for you, Mrs. Adams, to tell me whether I am out of order. I shall respect your rulings, as should all hon. Members.
The Minister said that it would be burdensome on other organisations to have to take part in the process of producing protocols. I was surprised at that response. She said that it would be inappropriate to place so much detail in the Bill. Amendment No. 2 states:
''To facilitate co-operation the Agency shall consult with other bodies and publish protocols for co-operation.''
Hon. Members elaborated on what they hoped might form the detail of such protocols, but the amendment does not spell out those details—nor should it. It is not intended to be prescriptive. It is intended to indicate a mechanism, a natural part of what I would expect the HPA to be undertaking. I am surprised that the Minister should think that to be needlessly prescriptive. She says that the 1997 Act places duties on NHS bodies to co-operate with local authorities. Indeed, the 1999 Act provides for co-operation between NHS organisations.
All of that is useful. However, to suggest that the amendment should be rejected simply because it would place a burden on the HPA to publish and consult, and that some things should not be published, is to give second-order arguments against the amendment. They might be reasons to amend the amendment, or to propose an alternative, but they are not reasons to reject it, as the Minister suggests.
The Minister also mentioned hospital-acquired infections, and the duty of strategic health
authorities to manage performance, but she did not address my desire to ensure that the public have meaningful comparable information across the NHS. I do not criticise the Government for introducing a mandatory system to monitor MRSA rates; I hope to see such monitoring for other infections in due course.
I am not convinced by the Minister's arguments. Amendment No. 2 is not intended to be prescriptive about the way in which protocols are drawn up, or about their precise contents. I arrived at the debate with the intention of merely probing—I genuinely wanted clarification from the Minister about the Government's thinking on emergency planning and drawing up procedures to govern relationships between organisations. However, I come away from it surprised that the Government are so resistant to the amendment, puzzled as to why they feel unable to give any comfort in that regard and convinced that I must return to the matter on Report. That would not have been the case had the Minister responded in a slightly more forthcoming way. That said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.