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Lord Smith of Leigh: I share some of the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. However, she is looking in the wrong direction to some extent. We should be looking at the role regional authorities can play in England in managing matters themselves. The noble Baroness is right that those bodies could have influence in the regions. Health matters and decisions about spending affect local areas significantly. They affect employment, regeneration and other matters important to the regions. It is vital that regional health strategies meet the strategies of other bodies that affect the regions.
Regionalism in England is on the march. Regions are beginning to recognise what they are missing out on. A BBC opinion poll in my region of the North West today states that 72 per cent of people would welcome the setting up of devolution in England. In answering the question, I hope that my noble friend will assure us that once devolution for England is proposed in the forthcoming legislation, health in those areas will not be forgotten. Meanwhile, I hope that the health bodies will talk to their regional partners to make sure that the strategies line up.
Lord Clement-Jones: That was fighting talk from the Back Benches opposite. It is great to see such support for regionalism from the Government Benches. Sometimes one does not see quite the same level of enthusiasm from the Front Bench.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I shall pass on the issue of regional government, though I warm to the noble Baroness's sentimental look back at the good old days of regional health authorities. I am beginning to think she should form an annual dinner where we meet to celebrate the past successes of those wonderful organisations.
Of course, it was the previous government who removed the old regional authorities, set up regional offices and then kept this rather peculiar role and
office of regional chairman to straddle alongside the regional offices, which frankly did not work. I note also that the previous government did not feel it necessary to put into place the kind of reporting mechanism which the noble Baroness is suggesting today.I want to make it clear, as I did in our earlier debate, that these directorates of health and social care are headquarters directorates of the Department of Health. It would not be appropriate for them to be the subject of separate processes of annual reporting.
I know the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, disagrees with me about the significance of those directorates not being a separate tier of the NHS. But it is an extremely important issue. The four directorates of health and social care are members of the Department of Health's management board. They will between them have the main responsibility for working directly with the NHS and performance managing strategic health authorities.
That role will involve the oversight and development of health and social care, ensuring that local health and social care communities are developed in an integrated way to deliver modernised services and supporting the Chief Executive and the Chief Inspector of Social Services at the Department of Health in assessing the performance of the whole system. In public health, the director for health and social care will have a regional director of public health and public health team co-located with each government office. I have already made clear that the regional directors of public health will be jointly accountable to the directors of health and social care, and to the Chief Medical Officer. They will be managing, as part of a national programme, the appointment, development and succession of senior management staff. They will be supporting Ministers through casework, ministerial visits and local intelligence.
As the noble Baroness said, they will deal with troubleshooting. I am fairly clear what that means. It means getting involved when things look as though they are going wrong; banging heads together—as the noble Baroness will be aware, I am very keen on that—and dealing with issues as they arise within the region for which they are particularly responsible. In the first instance they play a major role in developing the new organisations, maintaining close involvement, whenever necessary, with strategic health authorities and focusing very clearly on performance management.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, asked a number of questions about the specifics of how it will all work, or at least her amendment seeks to adduce that information in the fullness of time. First, she is right that regional offices will not be formally wound up until March 2003, but the new directors start their work formally from April this year. The 12-month period is merely a transition to deal with any overlap. Obviously we want to avoid any duplication of effort between the regional offices and the new directors.
In 2002-03 the running costs will amount to roughly £30 million rising to £34 million in the next two financial years. Clearly a number of matters have not yet been settled and I would not want to be held exactly to those figures.
The other point I would make is that those people are national directors. As I said, they have seats on the departmental board and we will expect them, alongside their regional responsibilities, to contribute to national work as well. It will be quite likely that a director of health and social care will also take on lead responsibility for national work as well. That reinforces my point that this is not an additional tier; these are merely senior officials of the Department of Health with specific responsibilities as part of their duties for a specific region in England. Accountability is quite clear. They will be accountable to the Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health.
From what I have said, I hope that Members of the Committee will agree that it would be inappropriate to single out just four members of the management board of the Department of Health for special treatment in that way. I invite the noble Baroness therefore to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Noakes: I thank the Minister for his reply and for the information contained in it.
Perhaps I should say at the outset that, though I was grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, the amendment was not tabled with any zeal for regionalisation, as he might imagine. It was tabled with a zeal to understand the interface between the Department of Health and frontline NHS and social services, to use the language of the department's website.
I hear what the Minister said as to what will be happening. It will be interesting to see how it works out in practice, which is why the amendment was moved. I hear what he says about this not being a tier, though that is not important. What it encourages me to do is to look at the information available as to what all members of the Department of Health management board do; perhaps it should not be confined to these four directors of health and social care. More light perhaps needs to be shed on the workings of the management board in general. I should like to think about that further. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Filkin: I beg to move that the House do now resume. In moving this Motion, perhaps I may suggest that the Committee stage of the Bill begins again not before 8.37 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Social Security Administration Act 1992 (Amendment) Order 2002
7.36 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Hollis of Heigham) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 28th February be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Baroness said: My Lords,this draft order is technical in nature so I shall be brief. It makes changes to the list of organisations that will be liable to provide information to the department and to local authorities for the purposes of combating benefit fraud. But it does not add any new categories of organisations to the list. It makes some changes to the definitions of organisations included, to bring them in line with current legislation, and it clears up some uncertainties and omissions from the original list, for the sake of clarity and the avoidance of doubt. An Explanatory Memorandum has been provided to assist your Lordships and I hope it has been of use.
The measures contained in this draft order are: first, to add the "Director of National Savings" to the list of those who may be required to provide information; secondly, to redefine banks and insurers so as to take account of recent changes brought about by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000; thirdly, to add distributors of gas and electricity to the list of information providers.
I can quickly deal with each of those in turn. First, with regard to the Director of National Savings, it was always our intention that we should be able to obtain information about national savings products using these powers. We believed that by including "any bank" in the original list of information providers—Section 109B(2A) of the Social Security Administration Act as amended by the Social Security Fraud Act—we were also including national savings. However, while the definition of "bank"—in subsection (7) of Section 109B—embraces the National Savings Bank, it does not extend to cover other national savings products such as premium bonds, national savings certificates, pensioner bonds, deposit bonds or capital bonds. Inserting a reference to the "Director of National Savings" in the list contained in Section 109B(2A) will enable authorised officers to obtain information about the full range of national savings products in line with our original policy intention.
Secondly, in terms of these regulations, the section on banks and insurers was also intended to be a purely technical change. We were aware at the time that the Social Security Fraud Bill was passing through its parliamentary stages, between December 2000 and May last year, that the coming into force of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and the repeal of the Banking Act 1987 and the Insurance Companies Act 1982 would necessitate new definitions of "banks" and "insurers". This took place last year and the new definitions are a consequence of the coming into force of the 2000 Act. This is achieved in Article 2(b) and Article 3(a) and (b) of the draft order.
The third push of these regulations concerns gas and electricity distributors. Over the past few months officials have been having meetings with those organisations affected by the new information gathering powers. In discussion with utility companies it has emerged that some clarification is needed. Following changes brought about by the Utilities Act 2000 there is now a clear demarcation in both the gas and electricity industries between companies who supply gas and electricity and companies who distribute these products. No one company can do both. For example, a distributor of electricity will carry electricity from the national grid to a particular property while a supplier will bill the householder for the electricity consumed.
While the fraud Act will allow for information to be obtained from a gas or electricity supply company, powers do not yet exist to require distribution companies to provide information as to the supplier to a particular household. The draft order provides for that to take place.
To conclude, we are making good progress in tackling fraud. Our latest figures show that in the two and a half years to March 2001 we have reduced the level of fraud and error in income support and jobseeker's allowance by 18 per cent, well ahead of the target we had expected to achieve by then. We expect this good progress to continue, but we need the tools to do the job, in particular access to information.
I repeat that these are technical, tidying up regulations. I shall do my best to answer questions. If not, I shall write to noble Lords. I commend the draft order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 28th February be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Baroness Hollis of Heigham)
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