Examination of draft legislation
20. The Committee examined no draft bills last year.
We asked the Department to keep us abreast of developments in
respect of the Draft Mental Health Bill, which we felt arrived
too late for us to be able to give it detailed consideration in
the last session. We have noted that the Government has indicated
that it would look favourably on the idea of referring the bill
to a special standing committee, a move we would welcome, and
we would hope that the membership of the Health Committee would
be well represented on such a committee.[8]
Extent to which systematic structure is in place
for meeting the indicative tasks listed, and response of department
21. The Committee would formally determine whether
or not to examine any draft bill. In our view, it would be helpful
if the Government could be more open about the timetable for any
draft legislation: the period of notice we received for the Draft
Mental Health Bill limited our capacity to scrutinize that bill.
Examination of expenditure
22. The Health Committee has for many years conducted
a detailed annual scrutiny of Departmental Expenditure, based
on a lengthy questionnaire submitted to the Department each summer.
The questionnaire provides a retrospective analysis of Department
of Health expenditure in the previous financial year. Both the
Secretary and Department of Health officials then give oral evidence
on the questionnaire, usually in October, and these proceedings
are published in addition to the questionnaire and response.
23. Data derived from the Public Expenditure Questionnaire
not only informs many of our inquiries it also acts as a useful
resource for academic and research institutions in the health
field.
Extent to which systematic structure is in place
for meeting the indicative tasks listed, and response of department
24. The Public Expenditure Questionnaire is an annual
task. It is re-written each year but a number of questions in
it remain the same to ensure consistency of data. The Department
devotes considerable resources to completing the questionnaire
for which we are grateful. However, the Department has a tendency
to slip in complying with our timetable which limits the time
we have to prepare for the oral evidence sessions.
25. With the advent of September sittings, we will
need to review the timetable for the Public Expenditure Questionnaire
and evidence.
Examination of Public
Service Agreements (PSAs)[9]
26. A number of PSA issues were addressed in the
Public Expenditure Questionnaire. The Spending Review (SR) 2002
target "to improve the quality of life and independence of
older people so that they can live at home wherever possible"
relates to one of the key issues addressed in our inquiry into
Delayed Discharges, where the Committee argued that it was essential
that, wherever possible, more support should be given to enable
people to live at home rather than undergo institutionalisation.
We put forward a number of proposals to facilitate this policy
and were pleased to see the Government in its reply looked constructively
at many of these. The inquiry also looked more generally at issues
of best use of hospital capacity, which in turn impacts on the
SR 2002 targets relating to maximum waits for outpatient appointments
and for Accident and Emergency admission.
Extent to which systematic structure is in place
for meeting the indicative tasks listed, and response of department?
27. No systematic structure exists at present for
the Committee to scrutinize specific PSAs. The majority of PSAs
were subject to some form of scrutiny over the previous year but
again the breadth of subject matter covered by so large a department
would make systematic scrutiny difficult.
8 HC Deb, 31 October 2002, col. 925W. Back
9
Public Service Agreements set goals for key service improvements
across Government. Back
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