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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

The Minister could have argued for the return of the provisions, but as he has more than the modicum of common sense commonly associated with his colleagues on the Front Bench, he will not do so. If one Googles ““barmy””, one picks up hundreds of thousands of potential hits, not a few of which relate to the concept of directly elected executives, as discussed in Committee in this House and the other place. It was always difficult to work out where on earth the desire for directly elected executives originated—it was eventually revealed in the other place that Switzerland and Portugal were trying those things. The word ““barmy”” was used on more than one occasion by noble Lords, whom I suspect would not usually use such a term. In general, there was a sense of surprise that a directly elected executive model of leadership was so strongly proposed by the Government, with apparently no outside support, when a modified committee system, which appeared to have quite a lot of outside support—at least, as an alternative executive arrangement—was not given any support or credence by the Government and was denied as a possible leadership model. That confused us even more.