Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I shall address the issue of the regulations because it involves a slightly narrower interpretation than that made by the noble Baroness. I shall then say a few words about how we want the expertise and commitment to continue working. I understand the noble Baroness’s concerns and I hope that I can reassure her. The power to make regulations set out in subsections (3) and (4) already requires the Secretary of State to consult such persons as he considers necessary. However, it is important to state that there is no intention of using these regulations in the near future. The power to make regulations has been taken simply to ensure that LINks activities can be kept up to date in the future. For example, if health and social care services change— perhaps with the announcement of major reforms—we want to ensure that LINks have enough flexibility so that the effectiveness of their activities is not restricted. We said that forums are now ill-suited to meet the changes because there needs to be a wider, more inclusive network, but what we have learnt from patients’ forums is very valuable and we certainly do not intend to lose that knowledge. The regulation-making powers are unlikely to be used soon, and patients’ forums will no longer exist if and when regulations are made to add to the powers of LINks. Amendments Nos. 238VB and 238VC seek a similar end when regulations are made detailing the duties of service providers to respond to requests for information made by LINks. Again, the Secretary of State must consult the members of patients’ forums. We shortly intend to make regulations on how service providers should respond to LINks, unlike the regulation-making power in Clause 222. We intend to draw up draft regulations and, in the next few months, will begin a full three-month consultation on the various powers, such as the power to review or to request information. It is absolutely our intention that that consultation should involve important stakeholders from many sectors. Many people who are interested in how LINks will work will have valuable opinions, and we do not wish to make patients’ forums a statutory consultee because we do not think that the consultation should be limited to that group. It would seem unwise to retain them as statutory consultees once they were abolished, but they obviously contain important expertise. The transition to the new system will be evolutionary. It is a new system and that is part of the argument for the way that things are being done. It is a new system rather than an amendment of the old system. As we say in the document on making effective LINks, there is no reason at all why forum members, as part of LINks, cannot continue to build on the often positive relationships that they have formed with specific NHS trusts, which, in many instances, have been valued on both sides. Specifically, LINks members will be able to form specialist sub-groups focusing on areas that include hospital trusts, mental health trusts and so on, as well as focusing on LINk-wide commissioning issues at PCT or local authority levels. That will build on best practice. I firmly believe that many people who have built up relationships and trust with those organisations will want, and need, to continue to be involved. Therefore, not only will they be consulted in respect of what the noble Baroness raised in her amendment but they will have a role in making LINks, and the flexibility in the system, work according to the good sense and interest of the institutions. I very much hope that patients’ forums will take that message in the spirit in which it is meant. We need the expertise and commitment to continue, and I very much hope that it will.