Clause 1 - Meaning of ''NHS body'' and ''qualifying hospital patient''

Part of Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:00 am on 10 December 2002.

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Photo of Simon Burns Simon Burns Shadow Spokesperson (Health) 11:00, 10 December 2002

This, too, is a probing amendment, leading on from amendments Nos. 8 and 9. The Bill defines ''qualifying hospital patients'' as those who are receiving, who have received or who are expecting to receive

''care of a description prescribed in regulations.''

I think that it is in order, because of the amendment and the wording of the clause, to discuss the regulations. The Bill does not describe what will be prescribed in the regulations. The explanatory notes give us an idea of what the regulations will include:

''In the first instance it is intended that the prescribed type will be acute or geriatric care provided in a general and acute hospital.''

They continue with what is presumably a hope list, saying:

''The types of care may later be extended to other sectors, such as mental health or intermediate care, as appropriate.''

Such hopes are very much up in the air. The Government may want to realise them at some point, but they are not as hard and fast as, for example, a manifesto commitment.

I am slightly disappointed that it is not clear from the Bill exactly what the Government want it to deal with in the first instance. It is rather unsatisfactory that we must rely on regulations that we have not seen, and on the very broad guidance in the explanatory notes. I say that especially because regulations throughout the Bill will be subject to negative rather than affirmative resolution. I will not argue the case for negative versus affirmative resolutions for statutory instruments, because we will debate that on another amendment. However, it is still valid to make the narrow point that it is a mistake to rely so heavily on unseen regulations to flesh out the Bill.

As I said, our probing amendment is intended to tease out from the Minister more information than is in the explanatory notes about what the Bill will deal with in the first instance. Can the Minister share with the Committee more of her understanding of what will be in the regulations, which will give detailed descriptions? I assume that her Department has been working on the general contents of the regulations for a considerable time, and I hope that she will tell us that it more or less knows what will be in them. If so, I make a further plea. Given that the Government pay lip service to the idea of open government and sharing information, will she release to the Committee the details of her thinking on the regulations, which she and her Department will no doubt issue as soon as they can after the Bill becomes law? That would enable us to complete our work over our two days of sittings in a better and more informed way.

On the advice of her parliamentary draftsmen, the Minister may argue—probably with some justification—that it would be wrong to accept the amendment. She may argue that it would put the Bill

in too much of a straitjacket and require the Government to introduce further legislation if they wanted to extend the descriptions in the Bill to intermediate and mental health care. I have considerable sympathy with that argument, but before the Minister is too cruel to the Opposition, who cannot rely on the professional services of parliamentary lawyers and draftsmen, I remind her that we tabled our probing amendment solely to tease out more of her thinking. If draft regulations on this and other parts of the Bill are available to her, will she make them available to the Committee to help and enhance our scrutiny?