Schedule 3
Health Bill [Lords]
Public Bill Committees, 23 June 2009, 4:00 pm
Stephen O'Brien (Shadow Minister, Health; Eddisbury, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 31, in schedule 3, page 48, line 10, leave out from ‘so’ to the end of line 12.
I am pleased to be back under your chairmanship, Mr. Key. We will try to make as much progress as we managed this morning, when we rattled along.
Amendment 31 again refers to the suspension of Monitor’s executives. The Secretary of State will not be obliged to undertake a review of suspensions until three months have elapsed from the time of suspension, and the amendment would remove that obligatory delay while preserving the opportunity for review. Why was that apparently arbitrary period chosen? Given, as I have said before, that suspended non-executives are unlikely to have recourse to the courts, surely they should be allowed a review as soon as is practicably possible.