Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 208: 208: Clause 106, page 68, line 3, leave out sub-paragraph (i) and insert— ““(i) the relevant Secretaries of State as determined from time to time by order of the Secretary of State with responsibility for local government.”” The noble Baroness said: My noble friend and I have added our names also to Amendments Nos. 209ZBA, 210C, 210D, 212EA and 212EB in this group. Amendments Nos. 209BA, 211 and 211C stand in the names of other Members of the Committee. In the last exchange, I believe that the Minister said that all partners will be equal in local area agreements. This group of amendments enables us to ask whether one partner will be more equal than others or, to put it another way, aka brick wall, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. We were prompted to table Amendment No. 208 by the Local Government Association. It asks which Secretary of State will deal with various matters. I am well aware that in law there is a single Secretary of State. That is at least one complication that one does not need to face in having to define them differently in Bills. However, in pointing that out, the Minister in the Commons said that he hoped he had answered the point. I could not see that he had—the point being that the Secretary of State is not required to co-operate in drawing up agreements, although he has the power to approve or reject them. That needs to be explained if the Secretary of State is to be a partner on an equal basis with the others. The Secretary of State should not be interposed at a point somewhere down the line in the sequence of arrangements as a facilitator or a hurdle or, indeed, a block. Amendment No. 209ZBA draws the Committee’s attention to the requirement in Clause 108 that the local authority in question has to submit the draft local area agreement to the Secretary of State when he so directs. The Secretary of State already has an order-making power under Clause 106. This morning I was rather distressed when I realised that I had not tabled an amendment to take out Clause 106(7). However, it is all part and parcel of the same argument that there is an enormous amount of prescription and that the Secretary of State’s role in the Bill appears not to be as one understood it from the White Paper and other government publications. Amendments Nos. 210C and 210D seek to leave out subsections (5) and (6) of Clause 108, which concern the Secretary of State’s directions. Therefore, the thrust of the amendments is that he or she should not make those directions. Amendments Nos. 212EA and 212EB seek to leave out similar requirements in Clause 113, which concerns revision proposals for designated targets. In summary, if the Secretary of State is to be a partner in the way that local authorities and many other organisations are to be partners, what can the Minister tell us which will enable us to read the Bill in a very different way from how I and my noble friends read it at present, applying common sense and an ordinary understanding of language? I beg to move.