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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate, which I am sorry we are having rather late in the evening. Some interesting issues have been raised. The noble Baroness will not be surprised that I cannot accept her amendment, although the case was presented well—certainly on what my noble friend has just said about the role of local authorities and the focus that we have to put into disadvantaged areas, such as worklessness, in particular. I refer to all the work that we have done through the neighbourhood renewal fund, for example, new deal for communities, and so on. We were making great progress in reducing comparative levels of crime and in education scores, and so on. The most difficult thing to drive down is worklessness. There are a number of important local strategies and some of the work being done by the DWP is very innovative. We are not turning our face against the amendments for frivolous reasons. There is a lot happening, which I shall address briefly, suggesting that there is a direction of travel, but there is also some tension in the frameworks that we need. Essentially, if the amendments were adopted, Amendment No. 219B would leave it to the discretion of the Secretary of State on whether to devolve these functions to individual local authorities. In contrast, Amendment No. 222B would automatically result in local authorities taking on the same set of functions through a modification of their community strategy. It is worth looking briefly at the legislative framework in which they operate. My first argument is that it already provides many of the tools they need to secure the well-being of their population. Part I of the Local Government Act 2000 sets out a framework for local authorities, their partners and wider communities to improve economic, social and environmental well-being. In that framework, prior to the 2000 Act, local authorities could only do what legislation expressly permitted them to do. There was little flexibility to do anything discretionary. That was changed by Section 2 of the 2000 Act, which reversed it and gave the power to these authorities to do anything they considered likely to improve or promote social or environmental well-being, subject to express legislative restrictions which I will come back to. The well-being power was a power of first resort. It is interesting that we are already aware of councils using the power specifically to deal with employment issues. The London Borough of Greenwich, for example, has set up a recruitment company using the well-being power, and Bridgnorth and West Devon district councils have used the power to work with their RDAs, among others, to increase development opportunities. Although they do not have these statutory responsibilities, there is no doubt that, with imagination, they are learning how to apply these tools. Authorities must also have regard to their community strategy when they consider exercising their well-being powers under the 2000 Act. They are subject to certain limitations, as the noble Baroness knows, set out in Section 3(1) and (2) of the 2000 Act including taking actions that are expressly prohibited in legislation and raising money by means of precepts, borrowing or otherwise. On the specific amendments, if we look only at the role of the local authority in taking forward the employment agenda, we come up against the first problem which is that this goes in the opposite direction of travel to where we are going with partnerships, local area agreements and the revised performance frameworks. All of those are a result of looking at ways of bringing functions together with a smaller number of shared objectives which, in some of these local areas, can particularly address worklessness or skills. Secondly, I put on the record the fundamental point that we have a national framework and national standards for income benefits, and for good reasons. That obviously goes back to Beveridge and the first post-war National Insurance Act. If we are going to debate overturning national standards, we must do so seriously. It is hardly something we could do late at night in this Bill, but it is a live issue and there is a lot of interest in how you can achieve a balance of powers and responsibilities. Indeed, we have moved in that direction, first, through the Sustainable Communities Bill which provides a means for taking this debate forward. Under that Bill, the Secretary of State would invite proposals from local authorities which they consider would help them promote the sustainability of local communities. More recent, and even more exciting in a way, is the review of sub-national economic development and regeneration which looked precisely at the right level for different functions to be delivered: national, regional, sub-regional or local. It threw down the challenge to local authorities to come to the Government with proposals for multi-area agreements. They would essentially be sub-regional. You could have some serious innovation there. We know that economic realities do not respect administrative boundaries. We have also devolved some of these elements, such as the learning and skills funding and functions, and I am sympathetic to the intention behind this. We have already announced that funding for the delivery of Connexions services will pass to all local authorities from April 2008. Subject to consultation and necessary legislation, funding for school sixth forms, sixth form colleges and the contribution of FE colleges to the 14-19 phase will also transfer to local authorities’ ring-fenced education budgets. That is important, because it is very much a local function. In conclusion, we have provided a great deal of freedom to local authorities in this regard—through the 2000 Act and clauses in this Bill—to introduce statutory LAAs, thereby stripping away some of the centralist elements. We must respect the checks and balances, but that does not mean to say that we are deaf or blind to innovation. It is a lively debate, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for enabling us to have it.