Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

That was the most encouraging thing that I have heard in the past two or three hours: the Minister said that the Government were thinking about these things. That is good news, because there are so many questions and potential problems that all we can ask the Government to do is to think. We hope that their thinking comes up with something that is a bit better. Returning to the question of what I keep calling aldermanic by-elections, but are actually elected executive by-elections, let us assume that there is an executive of six members. It is likely that they will be on the ballot paper in six wards. Assuming that they are all fairly prominent people in their party’s leadership on the council—the sort of people who would get on the executive if the existing executive arrangements applied—they will be standing for different wards and will probably be leading their tickets in each of those, say, three-member wards. There will be a lot of by-elections—it is not just a question of one or two. It is not like an election for a mayor, involving one person and in which one ward has a by-election. There will be a mini-general election for that authority. We are not raising trivial matters, of which it can be said, ““The by-elections will happen and who cares about a few by-elections?””. If the election is for a bigger executive of, say, eight people, half the wards in an authority such as an ordinary district council could have by-elections five or six weeks after the ordinary May elections. It could change control, but perhaps it would not matter because the elected executive would have total power. Secondly, I want to pick up the point the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, raised about what to do if things go wrong, because things will go wrong. You cannot design structures which guarantee utopia. You cannot design structures which guarantee adequate leadership, never mind excellent leadership. There will be people who are the wrong people, cannot cope, or for whatever reasons go off the rails. What does the council do under those circumstances? At the moment there are checks and balances within the council that allow something to happen. The majority party may sort it out and come up with a fresh leadership. Maybe a wider group of people on the council say that things have to change, and perhaps the next time they meet things will have changed. This system, as the noble Baroness said, is going to produce rigidity—a lack of flexibility—over four years. If everything is going wonderfully, there is no problem, but systems should not be designed for when things go wonderfully; they should be designed to cope with difficulties. Finally, the Minister said that in order to get such a system, a council would have to show that it will secure continuous improvement. That seems to me to beg the whole question of elections. Whether councils bring continuous improvement or any other sort of improvement will depend on who gets elected. You cannot design systems to guarantee continuous improvement. It all depends on who gets elected, who is running it and who is in control. There seems to be the fallacy at the heart of what has been proposed that you can get continuous improvement by imposing structures from above. You cannot.