Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I always enjoy may/shall debates and it has come early in the Bill. Amendments Nos. 10, 11 and 13—I think the noble Baroness was referring to them—remove the Secretary of State’s ability in future to specify the type of proposal invited to place greater emphasis on the choice that local authorities have and the type of proposal. We are at one with the noble Baroness in recognising that choice is important and because we are committed to a devolutionary approach, except in exceptional circumstances, we would not expect to seek to restrict an invitation in any way. If I can address the specific point: the clause enables us to deal in future with something that might arise, and it is entirely pragmatic and right that we should do so. I have stated several times already this morning that we have no current plans for further rounds of restructuring, but there may be cases in the future where the provisions in the clause would be required; for example, to make sense of a boundary change and where the ability to offer a particular choice would be very important. If I may explain, there may be an existing unitary authority which was too tightly bounded because of growth. There would be a strong case for the boundary of the unitary to be expanded and maybe to join with the neighbouring shire district. That is obviously a hypothetical case, but a way achieving that would be to invite a type C proposal for the new unitary. We could leave the invitation open, but if the local debate had already been focused on the merger of the unitary and the neighbouring district, specifying a type C proposal might avoid any unnecessary concerns or worries about what was expected. We are trying to cover eventualities in the most clear and harmonious way possible, which is why the clause is crafted in the way it is.