Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I am sorry to intervene in this way late in this discussion, which has been very helpful and has covered the detail and complexity of a system which must involve the whole community, officials, government and quasi-government bodies if it is to work. It is a wonderful example of trying to spell out in legislation a really good local, co-operative arrangement. I mean that most sincerely. However, I have a difficulty with this. When I come to the first line of Clause 108, I read some words that are just like running into a brick wall from the point of view of handing powers down to local authorities and genuinely allowing them to get on with things and do them on their own. The clause says: "““When the Secretary of State so directs, a responsible local authority must””." That is just like running into a brick wall. It takes all the voluntariness out of the business. If the Secretary of State directs, the local authority has to. Worse than that, if the Secretary of State does not direct, it does not have to do anything. The matter is more complicated than that because the Secretary of State has the power to designate individual improvement targets. I must admit that, although my time studying the detail of the Bill has perhaps not been sufficiently great, I have not found what happens to them once they are designated. I have no doubt that the Minister will be able to clear things up for me on that but it is the principle that really worries me. Here we have a part of the Bill headed ““Local area agreements”” and ““Co-operation of English authorities with local partners, etc””, and we put into a clause like that these dreadful words that stop it dead in its tracks.