Health and Social Care Bill

moved Amendment No. 37: 37: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause— ““Certain regulated activities to be functions of a public nature A regulated activity under this Part shall be deemed to be a function of a public nature for the purposes of section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (c. 42) where it is performed wholly or partly at public expense and arranged pursuant to statutory powers.”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 38. These are both important amendments. Fortunately, I can be brief, as the Government have already signalled their intention to table their own amendment—indeed, the Minister said so during Second Reading—but not, unfortunately, until a later stage of the Bill. The amendments concern the scope of the Human Rights Act and the decision of the House of Lords in the case of YL v Birmingham City Council and others in June 2007. YL was an elderly lady evicted from a private sector care home whose care was paid by Birmingham City Council. By a majority of three to two, the Law Lords ruled that YL could not bring an action against the care home under the Human Rights Act and Article 8, which covers the right to respect for her private life and home. They ruled that her claim lay solely against the local authority that funded her care. The Human Rights Act covers public authorities and the care home was not in this case acting as a public authority according to that decision of the House of Lords. I do not need to go into any of the legal aspects of this. I imagine that the Committee will welcome that, as I am not at all qualified to do so. However, from the perspective of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, this is an important issue. The committee has been engaged with the Government on this since at least 2003, when it launched an inquiry on the meaning of ““public authority””. The committee has published two stand-alone reports and has pressed the Government many times. Eventually, on 27 March this year, the Government announced that they would introduce an amendment to the Bill to ensure that those receiving publicly funded care in private care homes would be covered by the Human Rights Act. I said that these were important amendments—I have always been convinced of that—but, since I have had the privilege of sitting through the Committee stage so far and of listening to a number of people’s personal experiences, particularly the experiences of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I am forcefully reminded why the Joint Committee on Human Rights has been so determined to convince the Government that action needs to be taken. Will the Minister make sure that the Government’s amendments, should they be published, will appear soon enough for all those who have been working on this issue for a number of years to scrutinise them properly and that all the opinions that people have about them can be fed into the debate about this important matter, which we shall no doubt be having at a later stage? I beg to move.