Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

It is unlikely that there would be a conflict. It is rather counterproductive to have a conflict in a local area agreement. We are clear that the LAA targets must be derived from the priorities identified in the sustainable communities strategy. That is agreed as the overarching plan only when everybody has agreed what that community needs to sustain itself economically and so on. Local authorities have the opportunity to set out in that strategy the agenda that they believe the area should follow. There is no implication that the commitments which the local authorities have publicly made can be ignored or negated by the process. The whole point about the scope of the new performance framework is that it covers everything that the local authority does on its own or in partnership with others. Certainly, central government is not going to be involved in any targets other than the designated ones; that is the only place where the two bits of government will meet. That does not mean that local authorities cannot have their own additional targets, plans or strategies, but central government will not be involved in agreeing them. I would not want to say that this will never happen but, given the fact that these agreements will be the product of so much prehistory and sustained relationships, those sorts of issues will have to be resolved before they come forward. There will be things that people will not be able to agree about and I am sure that they will not end up being identified as targets because, by definition, deliverability will be an issue in such instances. I know that the noble Lord is speaking from experience but, with these caveats in place, I hope that we can be fairly optimistic about this.