Strategic Health Authorities (Establishment and Abolition) (England) Order

I am grateful for your ruling, Mr. Speaker. It had struck me that to debate the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury made, very perceptively, would have been to discuss the substance of the order. I recognised that that would not be relevant this evening, as your ruling on the point of order confirms. What matters is the fact that the order came into effect on 1 July, it having being laid before Parliament on 2 June—six or seven weeks before the House rose for the long summer recess. Why was not the order laid before the House and time found for a debate, so that we may understand the serious consequences that flow from it? I fully accept Mr. Speaker’s ruling that we must not debate the substance of the order. Schedule 2 abolishes all the strategic health authorities with which we were so familiar and which existed in our various constituencies across England, albeit not in Scotland. Schedule 1 replaces them with a lesser number of strategic health authorities but, interestingly, there were issues about the transfer of staff, so there will be no difference. Will the Minister explain why the House was not given the opportunity to debate the order and possibly to vote to refer it to Committee? That would have allowed us to discuss the substance.