Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

On the point of the noble Baroness, I understand that if anybody feels that they are going to be affected by a reorganisation, irrespective of whether they are within the specific boundaries, they are able to respond. No one is excluded from that process. Unless I am wrong, and I will certainly correct it if I am, that is my interpretation. On what the noble Lord said, it is interesting that local authorities have taken many different routes to ascertain the views of their local people. I cited North Yorkshire, but Cornwall, for example, commissioned a MORI poll of over 1,000 residents. North Cornwall District Council sent a survey to 6,000 households. There has been a serious attempt by many local authorities to drill down into what local people feel about what is proposed. On this amendment, we have been debating the Secretary of State’s role in Clause 7 and whether she should have any power to, as I have put it, parachute into the process and demand yet another review. That would undermine the integrity of what the local authorities have done at these early stages. Through the stakeholder consultation, the Secretary of State has been soliciting responses from individuals. We try really hard to collect the voices and ensure that the process has been genuinely informative so that stakeholders can have a role in the iterative process of making the proposal work. There is a big difference between the Boundary Commission making a proposal and one from a council which is democratically accountable, a point which the noble Baroness was making.