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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, we discussed this in Committee. The noble Baroness raises an important point. I do not have anything very new to say to her. Although we appreciate the intention behind the amendment, it raises issues which are serious enough to warrant not accepting it. Section 21 of the Local Government Act provides that a scrutiny committee can request information from anyone but the powers to require information are limited to a member of the executive or an officer. We stated in the White Paper—we have carried it into the Bill—that we would strengthen the role of overview and scrutiny committees to support councils in their place-shaping role and extend that power by enabling them to require information from public service providers, subject to the duty to co-operate on local area agreements. That is what the Bill does and it is a very welcome and significant extension. It was also clear in Committee that we all thought that it was important to get the balance right in the way we strengthen these powers. We want to see scrutiny committees looking at strategic issues, in particular the role of the local authority and local partners in delivering the sustainable communities strategy through local area agreements. Therefore, they will be able to request information from the council and those responsible for public services. I have no difficulty in agreeing with the noble Baroness that in some circumstances scrutiny committees may have concerns about the detailed way in which services are delivered, including where they have been contracted out. There is a lot of progress towards contracting out these days. Where they contract services it is vital to continue to expect that local authorities and others responsible for public services will as a matter of course specify in those contracts the arrangements enabling them to obtain information as part of the monitoring process in which they are involved. Contracts allow those commissioning the services to stipulate the terms and conditions of the arrangements. It would be very odd if they did not set out reporting requirements as part of that. The other point to which I return is accountability. Throughout the passage of the Bill we have said consistently that we think it is important that councils and other public bodies remain ultimately responsible for the services they commission. That is the spirit of the Bill. If councils were to request information from those contracted by other public service providers, it would be very confusing—a healthcare provider contracted by the PCT could find itself being scrutinised by the local authority to whom it is not accountable and by the PCT to whom it is accountable. This could be seen as letting the PCT off the hook for the way it has commissioned those services but it would also be confusing and burdensome for the service provider to be pulled in different directions. There is a real point there. Where councils require those responsible for public services to provide information and request that they appear before the committee, they will be able to ask their contractors along to accompany them. That may serve much of the purpose the noble Baroness seeks. I am sure she will agree that we should seek to minimise regulation on the business and voluntary sectors rather than placing unnecessary requirements on them. We believe that the arrangements in the Bill provide for clear lines of accountability which can be understood by commissioners and providers alike. That is the reason why I cannot accept Amendment No. 190. Amendments Nos. 193 and 194 concern the requirements on partner authorities to appear before O&S committees. As I explained in Committee, we intend in the regulations enabling councils to require information from local partners to provide that the partner will have the choice about whether to respond in writing within 20 days or to appear before the scrutiny committee. I take the point that has been made again this evening that sometimes it is better to discuss matters face to face, but I remind noble Lords of the context in which the scrutiny powers operate. They will apply to those responsible for public services who are subject to the duty to co-operate. They will be those with whom local authorities have partnership arrangements. We are not convinced that in those circumstances it would be helpful to allow local authorities to compel the officers of all those partners to attend scrutiny committees and be required to answer questions. That feels rather more like interrogation. It is important to maintain partnership working in such a way that councils do not believe that the only way of resolving an issue is to compel a partner to appear to answer questions. Most local authorities have very good partnership-working arrangements. The White Paper sets that out as the foundation for going forward. But we know that there are challenges. You could not work in local authorities and the voluntary sector without knowing that, as the contractual arrangements reflect. We do not think that compelling partners to attend and answer questions is the answer. If anything, there could be circumstances where enforced attendance would exacerbate the situation. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said in Committee that it was better to have a stick and not use it. The partnership-working arrangements in the White Paper set out a vision of local partners co-operating; they are not intended to provide sticks that the partners could use to beat each other with. We are trying to be careful and to achieve a balance, but I do not think that the amendment would help.