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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution, which sounded just like the comments of local government Ministers and former local government Ministers through the ages. Obviously, if one is in the middle and wants to see changes at the periphery, the best way of doing that is to order people to make those changes, but that is the opposite of what a localist approach should be. New clause 30 is not specifically related to the issue of the number of targets; it is about defining the boundaries between central Government decision taking and local democracy’s decision taking. The new clause is about setting up a mechanism for establishing where those boundaries should be—on an equal partnership basis between local and national representatives—and about presenting a report that would lead to a much clearer line being drawn. That would prevent some of the interference, perhaps in both directions, that is such a bind to our democratic system.