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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, we on these Benches did not add our names to the amendments, not because we do not have some sympathy with the point of view expressed by the noble Baroness, but because our concerns are rather differently focused. I will say more about that when we debate amendments tabled in my name and that of my noble friend. I have a lot of sympathy with the views expressed by the noble Baroness on the Conservative Benches. We have a problem. The authorities that we are currently discussing have been chosen in a process that is to some extent outside the law because we are debating the law now and it has not yet been passed. While there may not technically be an issue of retrospection—I am not a lawyer and do not know whether there is or not—a process has been started that cannot be finished until we pass the Bill. As we are approaching the end of the parliamentary Session and there is some panic to get this measure through, we find ourselves in a highly unsatisfactory situation where a group of local authorities are a long way down the road toward unitary status without a legal framework to back that up. To make it worse, it is not only the absence of a legal framework that causes us difficulty but the absence of a policy framework to underpin that. We in this House, in another place and, more importantly, in local government, do not understand what the Government want from local government with regard to unitary councils. Therefore, the situation is highly unsatisfactory. On these Benches we have taken a pragmatic view. Local authorities that are already in the process of restructuring are where they are. I recognise that there is a good deal of unhappiness and I shall discuss some of that in detail when we come to later amendments. Nevertheless, they have entered a process and gone a long way down the road and we believe that it would be irresponsible of us to do anything to prevent them moving forward now. However, that does not mean that we believe the Bill will provide a satisfactory framework for local authorities in the future. We certainly do not want to keep revisiting the same problems on more and more local authorities as time progresses and therefore we have tabled later amendments to deal with the question of timing. However, for now, I simply place on the record for the House the general unease that we on these Benches have about the process. I should also be interested to know whether the noble Baroness has heard any more about how the current judicial reviews are progressing.