Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 243: 243: Clause 235, page 164, line 19, leave out subsection (2) The noble Baroness said: I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 244, 245 and 245A. I am not at all surprised by the warning about pre-emption. I realised last night that my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, who cannot be here this evening, tabled one pair of amendments, I tabled another, and both pairs have the same function. I apologise to the Minister if that made it harder for her officials to write a brief. I am sure that they all got the point. In introducing the previous amendment, the Minister said that the Government want to leave it to authorities to set up their own arrangements and used the term ““authorities”” throughout her speech. My amendment is to provide precisely that in terms. It will be the whole authority and not an executive member—the relevant executive member or whatever—who makes the delegation. This is an important constitutional change. It should be for the council collectively as an authority to take the decision to pass certain functions to individual members and to take decisions on functions subject to the orders which we are used to. The bigger picture of a council’s constitution is largely a matter for the authority itself. As an authority, whatever the executive arrangements, it has, and will continue to have, certain major functions, including determining the budget. The council can currently promote decentralisation, even devolution, to neighbourhood committees and it sometimes even allocates budgets to neighbourhood or area committees. As I said, it is right for the council as a whole and not for an individual to take the decisions. In Committee on this clause in another place, the Minister gave an example which the noble Baroness did not give here. I did not think that it was a good example. It was a situation where a local councillor, approached by a constituent who needed to have window locks fitted, used his budget to fit them. If that is how this provision will go, it is a very bad idea. It will leave individual members open to difficult pressures to spend money on that sort of individual matter rather than as part of the community spend. It is not unlike the argument about charities. Should one give to charity, as it will let government off the hook in dealing with the issue? The noble Baroness gave the much better example of how this could be used in more appropriately. The Minister went on to use the argument that it is not right for a body that does not have a responsibility for a function to delegate it and that the executive member who has the function should have the right to delegate it as well. This is potentially such a significant matter that it ought to rest with the council. I beg to move.