Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I rise briefly to speak in favour of amendment No. 253, mainly to put on the public record my thanks to the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) for his sterling work on this issue, seen both in today’s amendment and in the private Member’s Bill that he is promoting. The need for that amendment and that Bill arose originally from instances in my own constituency of Cambridge, which the hon. Gentleman accurately described in his speech. I have heard only two arguments against the proposal. The first, put forward by the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), is that it is better to act at national level than at local level. The second is the argument put forward by the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), which is that what really matters is building houses, that to build houses requires one to think about the supply chain, and that house builders need a guarantee of volume in order to bring down the cost of housing. Both those arguments are incorrect. The argument about national standards misses the point about how we set good national standards. Central Government are often not in a position to decide the best standard without first taking into account the experience of local government. The role of local government in putting forward new ideas and allowing experimentation in policy is crucial, and we should value that role. If local authorities are prepared to go further than the national standards to see what the effects might be, I believe that that is a good thing.