Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene on this amendment, but just from memory, I can think of several areas where the presence of an environmental health officer at the centre would perhaps have speeded things up. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, alluded to air quality, but there are other examples as well. I am old enough to remember the smog of 1951 and the enormous benefit of the Clean Air Act which followed a few years later. I was also in your Lordships’ House when lead-free petrol was debated, and when that became law nationally. There is also the question of food safety—the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will know all about this—particularly the BSE epidemic, when it became necessary to ban animal-sourced feed for ruminant animals. Again, that required national legislation. Local environmental health officers, who do a fantastically important job, would not have been able to deal with these things on a local basis.