Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My hon. Friend makes a valid point and rings a bell of warning about what might be going on in the local authorities of which the Conservatives strained to gain control. She made her point effectively. I shall watch with interest to see how the 16 and 17-year-olds vote in two years’ time. I can imagine that the measure will be a good way of increasing youth turnout. I can guess which way those young people will vote—and it will not be for the party of the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire. I was saying that the bodies will be subject to the duty to co-operate in determining targets in local area agreements. I fear that those are dry-sounding words, but that measure, along with clause 108, which covers the duty to involve, consult and inform, changes the statutory framework within which local government operates. That is a significant development. The consultation will have regard to local area agreements. Given that a local authority prepares not just an LAA but a sustainable community strategy, there is a relationship between the Bill that we are discussing and the Sustainable Communities Bill, which is a private Member’s Bill that is in Committee at the moment. Agreements and strategies will be crucial to capture the vision and agreed priorities in local areas, but it is the engagement and negotiation between local partners, and the way in which they put strategies and agreed targets at the heart of their business, that will make them a success. That is a rather long way of saying, ““You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink””—the proof of the pudding, in other words. [Laughter.] That is enough metaphors. I will stick to common sense ones in future, as the Committee asked. The duty to co-operate to determine local improvement targets will ensure that all the key partners in an area take those obligations seriously. It is therefore important that the list is comprehensive in naming the main public sector bodies that deliver or co-ordinate local services. Amendments Nos. 20 to 28 and 55 reflect a number of commitments that I made in Committee to add further bodies to the list. They also deal with other bodies, which I shall briefly discuss. Amendments Nos. 20, 23 and 28 will add NHS trusts and foundation trusts to the list. In Committee, we enjoyed a good discussion on the merits of including those bodies in the duty to co-operate, and I made a commitment to do so through Government amendments. I made it clear, however, that by including them we did not wish to place on them, or the responsible local authorities, any unnecessary burdens, and I am satisfied that the amendments will not do so, but will instead ensure that NHS trusts and foundation trusts are involved in negotiations only where they operate hospitals, establishments or other facilities in the area covered by the LAA—what we refer to as the Great Ormond Street problem. A further commitment that I made in Committee was to add Transport for London to the list of partner authorities, and that will be the effect of amendments Nos. 22 and 27. I made it clear that I consider that the duties of co-operation most sensibly rest on the Greater London authority’s functional bodies—the Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, the London Development Agency and Transport for London—rather than on the authority itself, which of course has its own accountability function.