---

Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, this amendment allows us to talk briefly about the importance of having a proper implementation process. The noble Baroness referred to the implementation process involving the best of rural authorities and the people who need to be involved so that it is not a county or a district takeover. It is really important. In approaching finding the right process for implementation and working with the expert group available to us, we made sure that we had a process which people were clear about and could sign up to. It is clear on practically every page that we expect councillors to involve their local regional stakeholders and partners in their consideration. This has to be the basis of dialogue with the potentially affected councillors. There is no question that anyone should be taking over anyone. I shall come on to explain why the notion of the new authority is so important and why we have this running alongside the notion of a continuing authority for the sake of convenience. Amendment No. 40A requires the Secretary of State to create new districts for all single tier authorities created under Clause 7, which obviously would prevent the Secretary of State from making orders for new single tier authorities to be county councils. They would all have to be new district councils, not new county councils. I know that these are probing amendments essentially, but the effect would be that in Cornwall we would have to create a unitary Cornwall district council. This would have the same boundaries as the county of Cornwall and would carry out the same functions as a new Cornwall county council, but would be called Cornwall district council. I am not entirely certain that that would be very popular, but that is what it would do. We believe that new unitaries should serve as either county councils or district councils, whatever is the most appropriate for the area. We have always been clear—I said this in Committee and in letters to noble Lords—that the current restructuring of local government is about creating new authorities; that is, authorities with new functions and responsibilities. Looking at the proposals, it was very interesting just how innovatively people were thinking about the role of overview and scrutiny, the ways of engaging people and how to make information accessible to them. There are some genuinely innovative opportunities here. Revitalised local leadership and governance will help. Any unitary authority established as part of the restructuring process therefore will be a new authority in any commonly understood meaning of the word. Nowhere will the unitary authority, or how it serves the local people, simply be a continuation of what went before. However, we wanted to address in very practical terms, which came out of the process with the expert group, the necessity of keeping the transition process as simple and cost-effective as possible. We want to keep down the costs of transition to the benefit of everyone—local councils and local people alike. Where an existing authority covers the same area as the proposed new unitary authority, implementation arrangements will be more straightforward if the new unitary authority is treated, in technical terms, as a continuation of that existing district or county council. It should not mean that a county council should see that status as giving it licence to take over. That is not the issue or the point. It is about securing a process which reduces the amount of massive fundamental changes that have to be made. We would want to be able to treat county councils as continuing where appropriate. The amendment would stop us doing that. We have come at it in this way because the experience of the 1990s strongly supports this way of doing things with less disruption and a smoother transition, which is obviously what local government organisations want. To create a new district council in a county council area requires the abolition of the county council, the establishment of a new district council and the transfer of all functions, which is a much more elaborate process and additional work for everyone concerned. Bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said earlier, when we are trying to minimise disruption and unnecessary work, this would be additional work for no practical gain. It would also mean that during the transitional period there would be a county council operating alongside a shadow district council covering exactly the same area. We would have a duplication of effort and costs. This is not about the merger of councils. Rather, these devices will ensure a smooth transition and are not an excuse or fig leaf for doing anything other than what the implementation documentation document is quite clear about. These are discussions between partners in which the districts will be equal partners in the process of finding a route to a new authority. It is all about creating something new. We do not believe that removing the ability of the Secretary of State to use continuing county councils would be in the best interests of anyone involved. I turn to the specific questions put to me. I was asked whether the chief executive would have to be a new appointment. We certainly propose that there should be a new chief executive appointment through open competition, but we also propose that where councils wish for other senior directors to be so appointed, they too can be appointed through open competition. It is a choice that can be made locally. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked whether the Secretary of State could appoint councillors to continuing authorities. The Secretary of State cannot appoint councillors to transitional authorities, but he can specify the composition of the joint committee responsible for transition. If the noble Baroness looks again at the two paragraphs, I think she will see the distinction. However, I shall make sure that the point is made clear. I hope that the position is now clear. However, I want to put on the record that this implementation document is an important working tool which has to be observed. A great deal of hard work went into the process of making the document as clear as possible, and it is important that it is taken seriously by everyone involved in the process.