Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I am very grateful to the Minister for looking at this matter quite so seriously, as it is important. This is the first flicker of light that I have seen on the horizon on this vexed issue of counties and districts and two-tier areas. I had picked up the clause that the Minister referred to. Again, the problem is that the county council as the responsible authority will be consulting districts, and that it will not be about the county and the district working it out on the basis of agreement or of equality. It comes back to the question of what is an agreement and, if there is a difference of opinion, how that will be resolved. That is where a lot of the fears are. However, the fact that—if I understood what the Minister said, and I will read it carefully—local targets can vary locally at will, and some of the national targets will be variable locally where appropriate, is good news. It gives some hope that the very wide so-called local area agreements, which do not appear local at all to a lot of the people involved in them—they are too wide to be local—nevertheless can be broken down into localities, where they can have some meaning. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.