Greater London Authority Bill

I shall speak about these amendments in general because there is a whole heap of them. I half support what my noble friend said, in so far as I was persuaded by the Minister’s remark that the right person is the regional director of public health for London. It was a well argued case, and I can see the sense in it. However, that case is for public health and supports my noble friend’s amendments. I find the phrase ““health inequality”” very unsatisfactory. First, it is emotive, and, secondly, if I am being the devil’s advocate, when I read that one of the things the strategy must do is to, "““specify priorities for reducing those inequalities””." I could say that that could be done by loweringthe standard of those who are doing well down to the standard of those who are doing badly. To reduce the inequality is not necessarily to help the people atthe bottom end to move up. I do not like thewording. There are various other things. We have to be a bit careful because going back to GLC days, it was the policy of London regional government to take over the National Health Service, and I believe that the same principle follows with the GLA and that the Mayor would love to have the power to run the NHS in London. I have always bitterly opposed such a takeover because the National Health Service is such a huge concern already and to attempt to lump it in with regional government would be a disaster. The National Health Service is well run, but it is extremely complicated. My noble friend made the point thatthe Mayor should have a strategy. I agree with her definition of public health. The moment that everything else is involved, we run the risk that the Mayor will want to take over and micromanage health treatments on a day-to-day basis. That would be very bureaucratic, unsatisfactory and terribly costly for London council tax payers who pay all the costs. We have to consider things very carefully. This series of amendments goes a long way to help. One amendment deals with changing ““reduction of health inequalities”” to dealing with the ““health of persons”” in greater London. That is what we are all concerned about—whereas the inequalities are very difficult to deal with. You could spend many years and vast amounts of money trying to decide what they were, whereas the director of public health already has a very clear image. On the other side of public health, when you are really considering something that is going to sweep in—some pandemic or epidemic that may hit London—there is a strong case for a strategy to deal with those situations. On the whole, these amendments are good and the Government should look again at the wording of this clause, as it is not satisfactory.