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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I do not understand this amendment as it seems to me that the size of the executive should relate to the functions of the authority. The size of the authority does not affect the number of functions. What roles will the people on the executive play that we need more of them? One cabinet member will be responsible for children’s services. The fact that it is a bigger authority will not mean that we need more than one. Surely there will not be cabinet members on an executive for different parts of an authority. It seems that we should look at the whole area as one. If the executive is to have people playing real roles in the authority, size does not matter. Ten seems to be perfectly adequate for most large authorities for which we now have executives. Under this scheme my council could probably go up to an executive of 50 or 60, but there are not that many executive roles. Will we have executive members with no portfolios just to have more people being paid executive allowances? Size is not everything. We should just make sure that the executive is doing a real job; we do not need more people to do it.