Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

It ran into the several hundreds. The noble Lord did not ask four questions; he seemed to ask about 24 questions and I am not sure that I have recorded them all. Why is this clause in the Bill at all? It was not an afterthought and during the making of the Bill there were many pressures on the Bill team and Ministers to put many different things into it. We always intended this to be in the Bill because it provides up-date and feature-proof arrangements for entities. I shall come on to that later. As to what inspired the provision, the questions were: ““Are things going wrong? Are we limiting damage?””. Again, the answer is no; we are not aware of any evidence that entities are moving outside of the control of local authorities. In fact, Part 12 seeks to replace an old regime that applied only to companies. We want to ensure that controls apply to all entities, which are any bodies in respect of which financial information must be included in the local authority statement of accounts. I will come to a definition of that now. We want to ensure that controls apply through which local authorities can operate, and the clauses in the Bill achieve that. Over the past few years we have seen, along with the many changes in local government, changes in the relationships local government has with private organisations. They have taken very different forms. ““Entities”” include limited companies, public limited companies and limited liability partnerships, which were introduced in the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000. An example of that in connection with a local authority is the Kier Sheffield LLP, which was formed in 2003 between the Kier Group and Sheffield City Council to provide a repairs and maintenance service for the city’s social housing public and private buildings. Another example would be foreign-registered companies and other foreign legal vehicles. For example, if an authority in Kent set up a joint venture company with an authority in France and it was registered in France, it could still be caught by our new Part 12 proprietary controls. Yet another example is future legal vehicles. I am told that the beauty of the provisions in Part 12 is that they provide for future-proofing against any new legal vehicle. As for trusts, the sort of trusts we have in mind here can range from the local leisure trust to the local allotment trust. That is a very broad definition. All those different forms are contained within the notion of ““entity””. I think the noble Baroness is longing to ask a question.