Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Northbourne and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

The noble Lord raised the question of funding. Does he agree that this will perhaps be exacerbated in two-tier areas because the ring-fenced public health funding will go to the top-tier authorities, whereas the environmental health functions will remain with the lower-tier authorities—which indeed are extremely squeezed on their funding because this is what we call “other services”, which are not regarded as a priority—and finding a way of getting some of that funding down to the lower-tier environmental health authorities is a question that needs to be looked at?

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene now to ask the Minister to say, when he is winding up, what happens if the local authority does not do what it is supposed to do? It is not impossible. In fact, there is a great variety, as we sit here today, in the performance of local authorities. They are managed by elected members, who want to please their electorates, so there are all sorts of arguments for thinking that not every local authority is going to be very enthusiastic about these additional objectives.