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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with much of what the Minister has said about bureaucracy and regulation. The difficulty from my point of view is that I would not be starting from here. I did not create the overview and scrutiny model and the split between the executive and the rest of the council that is responsible for scrutiny. That has been created by this Government. The Government need to think very carefully about the long-term effects of the structures that they created in the 2000 Act and which go forward in this Bill. Those structures continue to bring into sharp contrast the executive role of some members on the one hand—or, in the case of a mayor, one member—and the scrutiny function of the others. As time goes on, the demarcation between those two groups of people will become clearer and clearer, and councils will become slightly more polarised. The elected members who are not on the executive or who do not become mayors are to be given the job of scrutiny. My contention is that, if they are to be given that job and if it is to be done effectively, they have to have all the tools at their disposal. I understand how accountability might be built into contracts, but the contracts will be let by the executive arm of the council, not by the other arm, and the executive arm may not have an interest in building robust scrutiny into the contracts. I urge the Government to think very carefully about how this will work in practice. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.