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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I have tabled a whole raft of amendments in this group—Amendments Nos. 102, 104 to 106, 108, 119, 123 to 125, 127 and 136—each of which would remove from the Bill any reference to an elected leader and Cabinet. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, beat me to it by mentioning it first, and I very much support what she said. We had a long discussion in Committee about this proposal, and many of the points that the noble Baroness has raised today were put forward then. But like her, the more I have thought about the proposal since Committee, the more daft it has seemed. It is rather like asking the current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, whether he would stand for election with all his Cabinet at the same time and leave all his MPs shafted, to be elected on their own while he took what he thought was the cream of Parliament for a separate election. Of course, if he did so he would have to do it against the chance that the Conservative Party would do the same—and in the light of all the recent joy, he would probably end up with a Conservative Cabinet and a few Labour Members of Parliament. The proposal does not make sense. In local government elections, local people will not be asked to vote for a party despite the fact that that is what they do. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, has waxed lyrical about the value of party groups. The electorate vote for a person within a party and that party wins. It is now proposed that, as part of that process, a lump of people—either those who are already going to stand as members of the council or a completely disparate and separate group—will be put forward. One can imagine a leader identifying somebody in the community whom they would like as the Cabinet member for finance and bringing them in. It will not necessarily be someone with experience of local government; it could be someone whom the leader thought was quite outside local government. That person could be brought in and put on top. If we are not careful about this, we could remove the need for councillors per se. There is a logical progression in these proposals for an elected Cabinet: one could create a smaller system consisting of a leader and a number of people to support him, an election for them, and a shafting of the rest. One can see how it would progress. There is ever less need for a large number of councillors because all the power is being vested in the Cabinet, and the Bill is doing nothing to lessen that. Although the council would have the choice of whether to implement this, I think that it would be the straw that broke local government’s back and that it would not do what the Minister believes it will, which is to increase the council’s authority. Everyone would be so baffled and bemused by the proposal that they would probably stay at home in droves, and that would give the council no legitimacy at all. We are as strongly opposed to the proposal as the noble Baroness and her party. If she presses the amendment to a vote, we will support her.