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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I appreciate the seriousness with which noble Lords have addressed these amendments and it behoves me to try to give as much reassurance as possible on the scenario presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, of a very unsettled future for local government. Nothing is further from our thoughts, as I shall explain when I respond. I dispute the suggestion that there has not been a framework or a policy. In the whole approach, the imperative was that we would be responsive to the potential wish of local authorities to move towards unitary status. We did that by invitation, and the criteria, the timetable and the process were very clear. I am not sure what else we could have done to signal our willingness to listen to whatever local authorities would come forward with. Under Amendment No. 10, we would be unable to issue any further invitations to councils for unitary proposals beyond the end of January 2008. In other words, we would not be able, for example, to issue a further invitation in order to make sense of Bedfordshire in relation to the proposal that we have received from Bedford borough. We cannot accept the amendments not out of perversity or any hidden agenda, but because they would impose a complete lack of flexibility on local government. I referred to Bedford in relation to the first group of amendments and explained why it is essential that we are able to invite the rest of the authorities in an area. It is essential that the invitation power remains on the statute book and that we retain the ability, under exceptional circumstances, to respond to a local authority that in the future may want to seek unitary status. Let me explain. I made it clear during the passage of the Bill, in the letters that I wrote to noble Lords on two separate occasions over the summer and in the meetings that I have had with them—and I am grateful to them for being willing to talk about and share some of the issues with me—that we have no plans for a future rolling programme of restructuring involving further major rounds of invitations. But we have to recognise the reality that there may be areas where, in the future, there is a specific and definite appetite for change and where it would be right to have the capacity to issue a focused and targeted invitation to the councils concerned in exceptional circumstances. The first and most obvious circumstance would be to make sense of a recommendation for boundary change. As I said on a previous amendment, when reviewing an area, the Boundary Committee may form the view that a unitary district council needs to expand its boundaries due to population or housing growth, and it may be necessary to expand the boundaries to such a degree that the remaining area of a two-tier district council was no longer viable. But Clause 8 prevents the Boundary Committee from recommending the replacement of a two-tier area with a single-tier area as a consequence of altering the boundary of a unitary council. In that situation, where there is a strong case for structural change—an imperative case stemming from a boundary change—Clauses 1 to 7 would enable the Government to invite the local authority in that area to come forward with a proposal that it believed made sense for the local area. Alternatively—these are the situations with which the noble Baroness is concerned—it might be the case in a two-tier area that the councils come to the conclusion that a unitary approach would be best. They could then ask the Secretary of State for an invitation and it would be open to the Secretary of State to invite them to put forward proposals. We have to leave the door open for such an eventuality, much as the Local Government Act 1992 left provisions for future changes on the statute book. But I stress to the noble Baroness that we do not seek a wide-open door; this is not a revolving door or a recipe for local authorities to come back and forth with proposals for unitary status. I do not want authorities to misunderstand this. I do not want them to think that they can keep working away, in the way described by noble Lords, at unitary plans rather than improving services. It would be a debilitating process if they took their eyes away from the improvement of their services, which is what they should be concerned about. That is not our intention and it will not be the case. That is why I say this is a limited application. Any invitation would have to have a very good case behind it, and would have to be targeted and focused. Maintaining the power to invite and implement proposals simply allows us to respond to such local circumstances. I assure noble Lords that we will not be encouraging invitations willy-nilly. It is not about issuing them on an arbitrary basis or encouraging anyone to follow whatever their neighbours may do. Even if a situation arises where an invitation is offered, it is entirely up to the local authority to come forward. However, as I say, these are exceptional circumstances. There is an important precedent on the statute book in the 1992 Act. We could have used that process in respect of any area, but it would have involved requesting the Electoral Commission to direct the Boundary Committee to undertake a structural review. That would have meant the committee would consider, having regard to any guidance issued by the Government, whether unity governance was right for the area and, if so, what it should be. That is the process that we have tried to reverse by making it locally driven. I hope that I have done enough to reassure noble Lords on both sides that they should not fear that the power will be used arbitrarily as a vehicle for unsettling local government. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that this is not a comfortable process; change of this sort is not. I understand, having read the papers and listened to local authorities, that there are difficulties for those who have to go through the process when these recommendations are made, but this is not an arbitrary invitation.