Clause 5
Health and Social Care Bill
4:45 pm
Ben Bradshaw (Minister of State (Health Services; Minister for the South West), Department of Health; Exeter, Labour)
I do apologise for arriving after this afternoon’s proceedings were under way. I was told 10 minutes, and the clock stood at nine as I came into the room, so if that was my mistake, I apologise.
The amendments stem from a basic misunderstanding of the distinction between the new regulator’s public health remit concerning activities that are not registered, and activities that are registered under the chapter. For the purposes of chapter 2, clause 5 effectively sets the outer boundary for the type of activities that could be included as regulated activities in regulations under clause 4. They have been framed deliberately widely to allow scope for new models of provision to be added to the list of activities.
On public health, the examples that the hon. Gentleman gave, such as substance abuse, smoking cessation, alcohol abuse and so forth are all public health activities that we envisage might be registered or considered for review. However, the general publicity campaigns that health trusts and Governments undertake would not be appropriate for inclusion in that area of the Bill, but they are covered in other areas of it.
The definition of health care in clause 5 explicitly includes
“all forms of health care provided for individuals,”.
Therefore, any public health services that provide health care to individuals would fall with the scope of registration. Chapter 2 lists the sorts of services that both I and the hon. Gentleman have mentioned. However, the campaigns that I refer to, which do not involve the provision of care to individuals, would not fall under that definition. We do not think that they present the tangible risk that we are dealing with in the registration provisions of the Bill, in the same way as provisions or services to individuals do. We accept, however, that a far greater emphasis should be put on public health, and it is important for the commission to look at those latter activities in respect of its other functions. For example, if a primary care trust runs a public health campaign, the commission should be able to consider that in its assessment of how well that trust meets the needs of its local population.
Clause 90 clarifies that such activities do not fall within the definition of health care only for the purposes of chapter 2. They will fall within that definition for the purposes of reviews, special reviews, investigations and so on. Given those assurances, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.