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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, we did indeed debate this, and I remember the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in particular pressing me quite hard on this point in Committee. I have also spoken to the Local Government Association about this matter and have tried to reassure it that this is certainly not a case of not trusting local authorities. The facility that we seek to make regulations is there for a purpose and it is a benign one. Perhaps I may explain that. Clearly, Amendments Nos. 195ZE, 195ZF, 195ZG and 195ZH would place the provisions on establishing joint overview and scrutiny committees in the Bill, and Amendments Nos. 195ZJ, 195ZK and 195ZL would place in the Bill the provisions on enabling the overview and scrutiny committees of district council in a two-tier area to make reports and recommendations to its county council or to that county’s executive. I want to explain to noble Lords why we are doing it this way and assure them that there is nothing malign or devious about it. The use of regulations to provide for enhanced scrutiny is not without precedent. The House recently approved similar provisions being made through regulations on the scrutiny of health matters in the National Health Service Act 2006 and on crime and disorder matters in the Police and Justice Act 2006. I should also point out to noble Lords that the provisions in Clause 127, which provide for new powers to enable scrutiny committees to require information from local partners, apply to both shire district and upper-tier councils. I therefore hope that if noble Lords are concerned that we are putting all the provisions which enhance the scrutiny powers of upper-tier councils on the face of the Bill, and implementing all the respective provisions for shire district councils through regulations, they can see that that is not the case. We will be implementing the provisions for both upper-tier and shire district councils through a combination of primary and secondary legislation. There are no second-class citizens here. As I have been reading through the preparations that we are making for local area agreements, I am also struck by the heavy weight that is given throughout those processes to the role of the district council. I know that we debated this in Committee, when I sought to provide reassurances. Since then, the guidance on the making of local area agreements has come out, and there is an important and specific role for district councils, which is marked throughout the documents and guidance that we have issued. That leads me to my second point, which is that the use of regulations does not mean that we intend to prioritise the implementation of the enhanced arrangements for upper tier councils over shire districts. Far from it. We know that the districts have a critical role to play in the making of local area agreements, and we discussed how that would be done in the early formative stages of negotiations through to delivery. It is our clear intention that we will commence the enhanced scrutiny powers, both in the Bill and through regulations, as a coherent package, and at the same time for all councils. The third assurance, and possibly the most important—this is the one about which I talked to the Local Government Association—is that we are not using regulations because we have any intention of returning to the days of micro-management of local authority functions. It is simply a reflection of the fact that the scrutiny of partners in two-tier areas will not operate in the same way as in single-tier areas. Regulations will provide us with the flexibility to ensure that we get the arrangements right. We shall not retreat to some dusty corridor to impose a set of regulations that do not reflect how things really work. We shall work closely with the Local Government Association, and local authorities, to develop the regulations. I can explain why we are using the regulations. In Committee, I said that to support councils in their role as place shapers, we were strengthening the ability of local authorities to hold local partners to account—that is, the duty to co-operate on local area agreements, and so on. Local partners will be required to provide information to scrutiny committees in relation to the attainment of LAA targets, and have regard to scrutiny committee reports and recommendations where they relate to these targets. The responsibility for co-ordinating LAAs rests with unitary councils—and in two-tier areas, county councils—but district councils are vital partners. In Committee, there seemed to be a general consensus that the enhanced scrutiny powers for shire districts should reflect the arrangements for LAAs and that providing the overview and scrutiny committees of shire district councils with exactly the same enhanced powers over LAA partners as county councils could cause confusion and duplication. That is what we are anxious to avoid. The consequence of that, for example, is that the Environment Agency could receive separate reports on two levels on similar matters containing conflicting recommendations, to which the EA would have to have regard, from a county and up to 13 district councils, and some of our larger areas. That would be the effect of Amendments Nos. 195ZJ, 195ZK and 195ZL. Clearly that is not satisfactory. It is our intention to provide the overview and scrutiny committees of shire district councils with enhanced scrutiny powers in relation to those partners that shire districts themselves have with partnership arrangements. There could be a district council, which might in the operation of the LAA make a partnership with, say, the Environment Agency in relation to a particular district issue on waste collection, for example. In relation to that specific partnership, reports could be produced, which honour LAA targets, and could be sent to the county council, thereby providing an important contribution to scrutiny. Those enhanced scrutiny powers apply to those specific partnerships at that level. As I have already explained, we need to ensure that the arrangements make sense and do not place unreasonable burdens on local partners. There are some important points of detail to address on these arrangements in two-tier areas. For example, which particular public service providers should be required to provide information to shire district scrutiny committees? What requirements should there be on county councils and local partners in relation to shire district scrutiny reports? All the regulations do is to give us the flexibility to ensure we can provide for a framework that does not see duplication and unnecessary burdens. It is really as simple as that. We also provided in the Bill, through regulations, that county and district councils may establish joint scrutiny committees, as the noble Baroness said, which would have the same enhanced powers of scrutiny over LAA partners as a county or unitary authority. Amendments Nos. 195ZJ, 195ZK and 195ZL would remove our ability to make such regulations. Again, we have not opted for that approach because we want to prescribe the fine details of how such local arrangements will work; far from it. Regulations simply ensure a broad framework and flexibility to address key questions, such as which of the powers in the Local Government Act 2000 underpinning individual scrutiny committees should apply to joint committees? Should councillors be able to take a councillor call for action to a joint committee? What requirements should there be on the councils or executives to which joint committees send reports? It is about providing some certainties for local councils on some of the powers and functions of the committees themselves. It is not about being prescriptive or saying how they should work or who should sit on these committees. It is nothing like that. It is enabling. It is about clarifying and ensuring that there is a clear path for them to take. There are some potentially broad powers here and, as I said in the White Paper, they need to be exercised responsibly by focusing on constructive challenge and consideration. Ultimately, everything is about improving services and benefits to people. I hope that the noble Baroness will feel that that fairly detailed explanation is reassuring enough for her to withdraw her amendment.