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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I slightly jumped the gun in replying to the Minister’s amendment because I, too, have considerable concerns about the breadth of the proposal. ““Any function”” of a local authority could cover a wide spectrum of services. If this can be passed down to ““a member”” of the local authority and ““through an executive member””—so it is clearly not the executive member who will be doing it—where will accountability lie for what the member is doing? If it is limited in scope to a small aspect of the local authority’s responsibility, that is a different matter. But that is not what the Bill says. We need some clarity on whether the function might start as a little mouse and finish as a roaring lion. There has got to be a middle point where a member cannot be responsible for a function. I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that this should not simply be passed through an executive member. If the principle is that a member can perform a function, then that should have the full authority of the local authority. Otherwise the issue of accountability will be very difficult to understand.