Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, Amendment 33 proposes the appointment of a chief environmental health officer for England. Incidentally, there is such a post in Wales. It is intended to balance the clinical role of the director of public health with that of a person of almost equivalent status—although not quite—in terms of the wide range of issues that fall within the province of environmental health officers working in district and unitary authorities. As I indicated in the debate on earlier amendments, a wide range of responsibilities fall within the area of environmental health that transcend ordinary health requirements but, by definition, often impinge on public health. For many years, environmental health officers have played a key role in protecting the public and in advancing areas of public policy across a range of local authority and other functions. Again, I cite housing, environmental issues, transport, air quality, water quality, fuel poverty and the like. It would generally strengthen the hand of the director of the national Commissioning Board and, more particularly, that of the Chief Medical Officer to have alongside him or her a person of sufficiently high status to address concerns not only within the Department of Health and the various structures that the Bill creates but across a range of other government departments, particularly those that relate to local government. That would involve the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Transport, Defra and, in the context of fuel poverty, the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It would also conceivably involve other government departments and, at a local level, different organisations whose responsibilities bear on a community’s well-being and where policy lead is clearly desirable at a national level. It used to be the case in many local authorities that a medically qualified officer of health worked alongside a chief public health officer, as I think they were then called. As I mentioned in Committee, it was certainly my experience to sit on a health committee that had two very powerful such officers. They produced very detailed annual reports independently but worked together to highlight issues that needed addressing by local and national government and other agencies. This proposal would substantially contribute to the work of whoever is to be responsible for public health within the department and it would facilitate precisely the kind of overview that the Minister has referred to as part of the outcomes framework for public health at an appropriate level. I hope that on this occasion the Government might just consider that wisdom is not concentrated on the government Benches and that others may make suggestions that can contribute to our shared goals. I would have thought that this was one of them, which could be met at a small cost but with the potential for a high return in its impact on public health policy and administration. I beg to move.