Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. I listened carefully to some of the ideas about what such a bond might be used for and hope that there would not be a narrow set of functions and services for which this kind of fundraising could be used. To some extent I am following up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. In particular, some of the needs of children and young people in many of these areas require a lot more support than they currently get. Even some health facilities might be the kind of thing, particularly on the preventative health side, that these bonds could be used for. It is very important that the Government give serious attention to this and also to using these bonds to leverage other funding sources for some of the projects that might be available. I hope that, if we go down this path, the uses to which these bonds might be put would be not drawn narrowly but spread over all the functions devolved to a combined authority.