Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 64:"Page 15, line 14, after ““known”” insert ““for the purposes of this Chapter””" The noble Earl said: Amendment No. 64 is perhaps slightly pedantic, but it attempts to pick up what seems at first sight to be a rather odd feature of Clause 17. Subsection (2) states:"““The person who is to be so nominated or appointed by a designated body is to be known as its accountable officer””." Yet if we look down to subsection (5)(e), we see that regulations may make provision,"““for the persons required to be nominated or appointed as mentioned in subsection (1) to be known by such name as is prescribed””." The question which therefore arises is: why does subsection (2) state that someone is to be known as the accountable officer when regulations may specify that he is to be known as something else? Amendment No. 65 in the group takes us to a rather more substantive issue. One of the recommendations made in Dame Janet Smith’s fourth report on the Shipman affair was that there should be restrictions on the right of GPs to prescribe controlled drugs to themselves, to their families and beyond normal clinical practice. One can see exactly why Dame Janet made the recommendation. When the Bill was being debated in another place last December, the Minister, Jane Kennedy, indicated that the Government were in the throes of consulting the General Medical Council, the General Dental Council, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and others on this very important issue. Is the Minister now in a position to give us an update on what point those discussions have reached? Bearing in mind the permissive nature of the wording in Clause 17(6), I wonder what disadvantage there would be in including a form of words along the lines suggested in my amendment so as to allow for the possibility that restrictions of the kind proposed by Dame Janet will be forthcoming. I beg to move.