Sustainable Communities Bill

We are getting close to the nub of the argument. Let us return to the Minister’s example of the Blackburn slipper. If a transfer of functions were sought from the NHS, or a public health aspect of the Department of Health, to the local authority to enable the local authority to provide the slippers, would the local authority have the power under new clause 1 to achieve the objective of improving public health by a means which the body giving over the function to the local authority would not have been empowered to engage in itself? In other words, in this case, would the local authority be able to give the slippers to the pensioners if the body from which it was getting the function and the money had not had the power to do so under its own remit? If the answer is that it would have those powers under new clause 1, we are where we need to be. If, as I suspect, the answer is no, and the local authority would be constrained to doing only those things that the body from which it derived the functions was able to do under its vires, new clause 1 does not quite get to where the Minister and I want to get to.