Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is right about the international status of the HPA. In many ways, the proposals for Public Health England take its development a step further by building on its successes and bringing other organisations into the new Public Health England. Independence of scientific expertise, as he and other noble Lords have said, is indeed crucial. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, is right that the HPA has an outstanding international reputation, and the intention is to build upon that. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, welcomes at least some of these proposals, even if he is concerned in other areas. When we discussed the provisions in Clause 8 that set out the Secretary of State’s health protection functions, we touched on Public Health England and the abolition of the Health Protection Agency. Public Health England will be the national component of the new public health system and will be established as an executive agency as part of the Department of Health. It will bring together activity currently spread across a range of bodies, including the Health Protection Agency, into a new unified body directly accountable to the Secretary of State. It is important to emphasise that the agency is just one component of a system that is currently fragmented, opaque and spread across central government, local government, the NHS and other arm’s-length bodies such as the Food Standards Agency and the National Treatment Agency. We want to replace all that with a clearly defined and much more unified system for protecting and improving the nation’s health. Public Health England will be able to build on the recognised expertise within our public health system from a range of organisations. We understand that there have been some concerns about the status of Public Health England. I hope that I can reassure noble Lords that further amendments in this area are not necessary; I hear what they say about those concerns but I hope that we can address them. As an executive agency, Public Health England will have a distinct identity and a chief executive with clear accountability for carrying out its functions. Its status will underline its responsibility for offering scientifically rigorous and impartial advice. As we design Public Health England, we will work closely with stakeholders to ensure that it offers support for directors of public health and their partners in the local system. We talked more about the local side of that the other day. Many noble Lords have expressed concerns about the independence of Public Health England and the need to ensure that it has appropriate corporate governance. We have listened to what people have said. I can say for the first time that we can commit today that the chief executive of Public Health England will chair a board. This will include at least three non-executive members who will provide independent advice and support. We expect the non-executive members to have relevant experience in the public health field, local government or the voluntary and community or private sector in order to provide a broad range of experience and challenge and advise on how the organisation can maximise its income generation abilities. In addition, we will be looking to one of these non-executive directors to have the necessary skills to chair Public Health England’s audit and risk committee, which will provide assurance on risk management, governance and internal control for Public Health England.