Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I am not reassured at all, I am afraid, for which I apologise to the Minister. However, the system that will be put into operation in shire counties is already very bureaucratic. It will require a huge amount of negotiation and will take up a large amount of time of a large number of district council officers. Big counties may sometimes seem to have a limitless number of officers to do these things, but districts do not; they are very often quite tightly run and have a relatively small number of staff, for fairly obvious reasons. In a county the size of Lancashire—I will speak about Lancashire again because it is the county that I know best; it is also one of the biggest and most diverse counties—one size fits all will simply not work across the county. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said that we would have local community strategies all over the place. We are going to have those already. Every district has a local community strategy, and the county will have a community strategy. Simply meshing those together will require a huge amount of time and energy. So they will exist already. The Minister says that there will be equality because there must be agreements. If there must be agreements, there must be agreements, and it does not matter whether they are under my proposed system or the Government’s proposed system for a whole county in these circumstances. If it is an agreement, it is an agreement. If there is no agreement and there is gridlock—to use her word—the districts’ views will not be the ones that prevail when the Minister comes along. The arrangements under the local area agreement scheme that I propose would be permissive. They would have to be discussed and agreed in each county. In some cases, we might well be talking about a whole county, so it would be permissive. The idea that the same local area agreement and targets can apply to Rossendale, Morecombe, Ormskirk and Nelson is nonsense. If there are going to be different targets, it would be far better for them to be sub-county—or sub-region, as we call east Lancashire, central Lancashire and so on—area agreements, and for them to apply at the level at which they will be relevant and will matter rather than trying to build them all into a county-wide local area agreement. I am not satisfied at all. The Government need to think a great deal more about how this will work. That is my appeal to them this evening. If we are going to have local area agreements, will the Government look at these areas again? In some of the large counties with large, powerful districts, it will be a nightmare unless it is sorted out. Many people at district level in these places do not think that it is sorted out. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, although we will have to talk about this matter again. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 204H not moved.] Clause 105 agreed to. Clause 106 [Application of Chapter: partner authorities]: