Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

My Lords, in Committee I sat through an extensive exchange in the debate between the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the Minister. I thought at the time that the noble Lords were enjoying themselves while the Minister was not. While I accept in principle that the devolution of the NHS has no problems with it—after all, we used to have regional health authorities—what is a problem is ensuring that they should be bound by the same statutory national regulations so that they do not themselves invent new regulations that are neither statutory nor binding on others. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is important: if one set of regulations could be found in the Bill that would be binding, we would get away from having to make different sets of regulations each and every time, which is what would cause confusion. That is what the noble Lord alluded to and it seemed sensible to me. In principle, though, I accept that the devolution of the NHS is not a bad idea.