Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I can give the noble Lord a positive answer on Amendment No. 123A, which aims to ensure that the amendments made by Clause 63 in respect of the discharge of the function do not prevent executive functions being delegated to an area committee established under Section 18 of the Local Government Act 2000. Amendment No. 123B relates to arrangements for the discharge of an executive’s functions by an area committee, by the executive of another local authority, or by another local authority. It also relates to the joint exercise of an executive’s functions with another authority or executive. The amendment would require such joint arrangements to be approved by the full council. I reassure the noble Lord that Amendment No. 123A is unnecessary because Clause 63 does not interfere with Section 18. The changes being introduced by the Bill do not prevent the sort of arrangements he was describing in the excellent work of area committees. That being the case, councils will have just the same ability to delegate functions to area committees as at present. I hope that that will reassure him. I am afraid I cannot agree so wholeheartedly with the noble Lord’s second point in Amendment No. 123B. That essentially would provide that decisions about discharging functions under arrangements made under Section 18 should in effect be subject to approval by the full council. That obviously contradicts what we are trying to do in concentrating executive arrangements and focusing executive functions. That must lie—this includes the methods by which they are discharged—with the executive. In our new arrangements, as we will probably discuss, all the executive functions are to be vested in the leader of the executive. To provide that, if the leader or the executive wished to discharge certain of their functions in a particular way, they must have the support of the full council is obviously contradictory to the concept of executive functions. It is worth reminding noble Lords about the limits to executive functions. Under the 2000 Act there are specific areas that are not executive functions, and those are the major strategic decisions: the budget; the council’s sustainable community strategy; and quasi-judicial matters such as planning and licensing. It is absolutely right for the council to take those strategic decisions, particularly in relation to quasi-judicial decisions. They should not be in the hands of a small executive. All the other functions of an authority rightly lie with the executive and in future, in the first instance, with the leader. That includes decisions about how the executive functions are to be discharged. I hope, on the one hand, that the noble Lord will welcome the reassurance on Amendment No. 123A and forgive me for not being able to accept Amendment No. 123B.