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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, we took another amendment before turning to the Statement because we thought that we had better ensure that the Prime Minister was not on his feet. We thought that we had a short technical amendment. I shall answer the noble Baroness as briefly and as concisely as possible. Let me take the Welsh situation first. The Bill allowed only English authorities to operate DEEs. As local government is a devolved matter, it is for the National Assembly for Wales to consider whether, in future, Welsh councils should be able to develop this model. So Wales is pursuing its own course. I turn to the amendment that looks at the relationship between new Section 33I and Section 11. I can reassure the noble Baroness that our amendments remove all the provisions that would have allowed councils to resolve to move to the DEE model. In tidying up the Bill, we have amended the Local Government Act 2000 to return it to its pre-Bill position in relation to providing for additional forms of executive arrangement. On Section 11(5), at various stage of the Bill I said that this would enable local authorities to come forward with other innovative forms of executive arrangements. Therefore, by implication, the Government would not be bringing forward DEEs by a backdoor, but would be able to respond if local authorities had something in mind that they wanted to do, to which all members of the executive agreed. Where a council asked to pilot such an approach and we were satisfied that leadership arrangements would be likely to ensure that decisions of the authority were taken in an efficient and transparent manner, we think that we should be able to provide for that—that is the burden of the clause. Clearly, we would have to seek the approval of both Houses for any such regulations, but that possibility is there. On Clause 12, I am grateful that the noble Baroness has brought her third point to our attention. I can assure her that, despite the references in Clause 12, the substantive amendments to remove DEEs mean that we would not be able to provide for this model for a council that had been newly established. The final point was about this rather confusing language of an old-style leader and Cabinet. That is indeed the leader and Cabinet as created through the 2000 Act; the new style is the leader and Cabinet as amended by this Bill. On Question, amendment agreed to. Clause 38 [Resolution for elections by halves: requirements]: