Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 16: 16: Clause 3, page 3, line 18, at end insert— ““( ) The Secretary of State shall give guidance as to the consultations of residents, businesses, voluntary and statutory organisations and others to be undertaken by the principal authorities concerned and by him.”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 16 is in a group that contains two government amendments. Two of my further amendments in this group amend the government amendments. I will speak to them all together. The Minister will anticipate what I intend to say. Amendment No. 16 provides for the Secretary of State to give guidance on who should be consulted. It is not a particularly elegant amendment, but it is there because I could not believe that I had reached this point in my reading of the Bill without seeing a reference to consultation. It might be implicit in earlier parts of the Bill, but it is not spelt out or required. If I use the term ““retrospective””, the Minister will understand that I do not use it in a technical sense, but this amendment illustrates retrospectively, in lay terms, the very odd situation that we find ourselves in. The amendment raises not just the need for consultation. It may be that it is not required because the process is done and close to dusted, although we have heard that there is the prospect of some sort of resurrection or continuation. It also raises the issue of quality of information and sometimes misinformation—and sometimes, no doubt, information characterised as misinformation—or indeed the completeness of information. The amendment may now be irrelevant, given the timing, but the principle is worth airing. Government Amendment No. 29 requires the Secretary of State, under Clause 7, to go to, "““such other persons as he considers appropriate””." I have sought to reinstate the reference to persons whom he believes to have an interest, in order to understand who is appropriate within this provision. It would have seemed to me on a ““new reader, start here”” basis that ““persons who have an interest”” would be appropriate. However, the more that I thought about it, the less clear I was which was the wider and which the narrower of the two terms. Amendment No. 31 raises the issue of who is a person for this purpose. I suspect that we will be told that it has a very wide definition, but I would like to have that confirmation. Amendment No. 52 concerns the timing of formal consultation and local debate, providing that the Secretary of State—we have now jumped to Clause 21, but the issues are similar—will take full account of representations made at any time before the commencement of the relevant provisions. That has come about because we have been contacted by local authority members in areas which are in contention—if I go on using that term, at least everyone will know what I mean—where the deadline for responses is around the middle or towards the end of June. Authorities in the relevant areas were known to be submitting supplementary information and the stakeholders, or persons interested, felt the need to be reassured that they would have the opportunity to comment on or rebut any of the materials included in that supplementary presentation. I understand that they asked the department what its position would be on that, but that, at that time, they had not had a response. It is important that the process commands confidence. We may have shown a lack of confidence today, but I hope that at the end of the process there will be confidence in what has happened. It is important that those who are assessing the bids are able to take account of everything that is presented to them. I beg to move.