Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I shall do my best to be brief. New clause 34 stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) and a number of other colleagues. The Bill has generally been consensual, but now the rubber will hit the road: we now need to ask the Minister to choose from some of the issues at the heart of the Bill. Committee members will remember a champagne moment when the Minister, having been chided for being over-centralist, stood back from the Front Bench and said, ““I want to be devolutionary; let them choose.”” That was a moving moment and, as we have seen in Committee and in the Chamber, he has in limited respects been open to allowing people to choose, but not on executive arrangements. I have three particular concerns to raise, and as I suspect that a couple of other Members want to speak I shall do my best to be brief. Local freedom is a key issue. At the heart of our debates on the Bill is an issue that we have discussed intermittently during its passage: whether it is truly devolutionary. The Bill provides an acid test. Local decision making is key to local government. The Government are right that local authorities need to have good, clear, effective and efficient leadership, but it must be local. Our principal complaint with the Bill is that the Government are being prescriptive in having a limited number of models for efficient and effective local government. We simply pose this question: why? Do the Government truly trust local government to deliver? The Minister has made much of the progress of local government over the past 10 years, which he claims is due to the targets exerted by Government, but which local government feel owes much to its ability to respond.