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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I seem to be doomed to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. I must tell my colleagues on the Liberal Benches that I am happy to put whatever I can on the record. With their co-operation, we tried in the summer to make sure that we teased out some of those things that were of necessity obscuring the Bill and we cleared away some of the undergrowth. However, if the House finds it helpful, I am happy to do that as much as possible as we go through the Bill without protracting the process. We debated aspects of Amendment No. 19 in Committee, but there is a significant difference because it now also relates to councils being able to decline a direction to submit a unitary proposal. It is worth repeating that in Committee I explained that an invitation was just that—an invitation—and that the document invited local authorities, if they so wished, to make a proposal for future unitary local government structures for their areas. We received 26 proposals but there were numerous areas from which no proposals were forthcoming. My interpretation of that would be, ““Thanks, but no thanks””, with local authorities indicating that they were simply not interested and some areas looking for enhanced two-tier working. In the areas which did not take up our invitation, it was, in effect, ““declined””. I return to the point that I made in Committee: we believe that it is unnecessary to make explicit provision for this matter in the Bill, as it is a matter of common sense. I turn to the right to decline a direction. I do not want to reiterate what I said earlier to noble Lords because I think that I made the limitations on the power of direction as clear as I could. I have set out that our approach is devolutionary and that proposals will come forward from elected local authorities. As I stressed, in order to bring the round of restructuring to an orderly conclusion, it may be necessary to direct a local authority to submit a proposal for unitary local government if that is the only way to enable the other local authority in the picture to go ahead with the proposal. As we discussed earlier, this would be a proposal from a democratically elected council. I also explained, and I think the House agreed, that the direction power is time-limited until 25 January 2008. I assured noble Lords that we would use it only to deal with an area which was residual to one of the proposals which we announced the Secretary of State was minded to implement. It may be worth stressing that we worked with the Local Government Association to narrow the scope of the direction power, and it is generally content with our position. I hope that, on that basis, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.