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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful. That will lead me to withdraw my amendment, but before I do I will just comment on the second amendment. The Minister said that the Government were not about undermining the powers of principal councils. I thought that double devolution was all about undermining the powers of principal councils. Well, ““undermining”” may be the wrong word; perhaps ““assisting them to exercise those powers through community institutions from below””, or something like that, might be more appropriate. I fear that I cannot put it into new Labour words. Even so, if we are serious about double devolution we must accept that often powers must go down. In relation to the second amendment, the Minister said, ““We do not expect to see the death of parishes””. Under my reading of the Bill, I do not see how we can prevent local authorities abolishing parishes, but the fact that the Minister has said it here may help some poor parish in its judicial review if it finds itself in that position, so that was a helpful comment. What will the Government do if local authorities start abolishing parishes unreasonably? There is no right of appeal. There is no veto by means of polls, as I am suggesting. The only recourse would be judicial review. A small parish may well think that it is better to curl up and die than to impose the council tax increase that the cost of judicial review might involve. If the Minister could write to explain what she meant by saying, ““We do not expect to see the death of parishes””, that would be extremely helpful. She said that they would not be able to abolish a parish just because they did not like it. That is great news, but it does not seem to be what the legislation says. Some information about that would be extremely helpful. In the mean time I am fairly happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 163B not moved.] Clause 102 [Publicising outcome]: