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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, my Amendment No. 21 seeks to do the same thing as the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness. I am coming at this from a slightly different angle. I do not in principle have any objection to the idea that two local authorities may want to merge and that they may be across a border. Not all existing borders are ancient and not all command that sort of loyalty, so I can see where a case might be made. My confusion about this provision is simply that we were given assurances in another place and in Committee that this piece of legislation was really intended only to apply to those local authorities which were currently in the frame for reorganisation. As none of those includes a proposal that extends across borders—none of them is a type C authority—not one of them will, even when you look at the knock-on effects, involve any cross-border reorganisation. I therefore cannot see why the provision is in the Bill and why it needs to remain, unless the Bill is intended to create the framework for further restructuring, in which case the assurances that we have been given so far are pretty meaningless.