Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I rise to make one or two remarks in view of the fact that my noble friend will not be objecting to Clause 2 standing part of the Bill. I invite the Minster to address the specific point of why the process of beginning the formation of unitary councils was started in advance of this legislation. We have had the two-tier system for a long time. While it is right that it should be reviewed from time to time there was actually no tearing hurry. I can see no reason, unless the Minister can give me one, why it was not possible to put the legislation in place and then move forward to the specifics. That would have been more logical in terms of the parliamentary process and would also have avoided some of the problems we now face where local authorities are out there and are more or less to guess why one proposal or another has found favour. My noble friend has just mentioned the Lancashire example. He believes that it was the effect on the remainder of the county which proved to be the stumbling block. Yet in East Anglia, where I live, both Ipswich and Norwich have moved forward to be considered as unitaries, despite the same issues being raised by the rest of the county. Local authorities are left trying to operate in a sphere that they do not understand. Had we had the legislation first we could at least have debated the principles of unitary authorities and set out some ground rules under which we could operate. The debates on the Bill in another place raise more questions than answers. For example, Mr Woolas, who was in charge of the Bill at the time, argued that one of the ways in which bids will be measured is the effect that they will have on council tax. Anyone who knows anything about local government knows that council tax is not really related to how much local authorities are spending or whether they offer value for money. It is such a complicated system. Council tax is a pretty imperfect way of measuring anything. To determine whether a unitary bid should be favoured simply on the basis of how it affects the council tax is bizarre. It is certainly not clear from what the Minister said what will happen if a proposal is based on some promise made by a council that it will keep the council tax at a particular rate. What if it does not? Will it be capped? How will this work? Councils have put in bids without knowing any of these basic ground rules. Had we had the legislation first, we could have at least established some of those rules. I would like the Minister to address that issue.