Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I am afraid that my name is not attached to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. I was not quick enough to get in the queue of people who wanted to get their names on this, but I have been banging on a little about the disappearance of the HPA and the need for an independent body just as is described in this amendment—and even better in the other amendments seeking a special health authority. I suppose we are not likely to get that this evening but we may be able to get somewhere with Amendment 162. What I find very difficult to understand is why the Secretary of State would want to take this on. Having chaired the PHLS and then the HPA and now Public Health England, which is an even bigger body with even more responsibilities and a whole host of practical activities—scientific, laboratory, epidemiological—why would a government department want to take that on? Is it that it did not trust the HPA? Is it to save money? Did the HPA in some way fail? What is the rationale for the Secretary of State to want to take it inside the department and lose that level of independence, that ability to look outside and that facility to take advice from independent chairmen and members of the board? I find it very difficult to believe that if the department wants this job done—and I do not doubt that it wants this job done very well indeed—it cannot expect to do it as well within the department as if it allowed an agency that was directly responsible and directly answerable to the Secretary of State but had that degree of independence that would give confidence to the public and the profession that it was doing a good job. I find it difficult to imagine why that cannot be done, and I do not understand the reasons why not.