Following Nicholas Soames’s very strongly expressed anger at the way the Best Care, Best Place consultation was carried out and his criticisms over the lamentable lack of scrutiny by the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee of West Sussex County Council, Nicholas Soames has had discussions, with the Minister of State, Rosie Winterton, at the Department for Health, about the general process of consultation and overview.

Following an earlier meeting in June, Mrs Winterton commissioned the Centre for Public Scrutiny to prepare a specific publication dealing with the process of consultation around substantial change to health services. In a letter to Mr Soames dated the 6th December Mrs Winterton said; “I believe it and other related pieces of guidance deal explicitly with your concerns and I am sure that Overview and Scrutiny Committees will find it extremely helpful in tackling their important role of scrutiny of major changes.”

Nicholas Soames has forwarded the document to West Sussex County Council so that they may see the new arrangements. Commenting Mr Soames said; “I believe that the process is now more robust and if ever changes of this type are proposed again they should be subject to much more rigorous scrutiny at local level including the calling of independent witnesses.

“Without these both scrutiny and consultation have little credibility on such important matters.”