Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I am grateful for my noble friend’s intervention because there is a danger of making a meal of this, if I may so put it. I want to stress how much this is a negotiated process between local authorities and the regional offices representing the Secretary of State. It is interesting to note that my noble friend has degrouped an amendment that would have imposed an extra discipline on the Secretary of State, which would have been too rigid. In fact, several of the amendments seem to seek more discipline while others introduce less rigidity. It is important that I explain to noble Lords how we think this is going to work and how the Secretary of State fits in. The idea that the Secretary of State is a heavy-handed person or office which jumps into the process at some stage and either brings it to a halt or insists on how it is going to be done is not how it is going to happen. I can assure noble Lords of that and I emphasise that that is not the kind of relationship we want to create. I refer noble Lords to the statement of intent accompanying this part of the Bill, Cooperation of English Authorities with Local Partners. We made it clear in the other place that the new-style LAAs will be a genuine negotiation between central and local government and their partners. We are building on the local government White Paper, and recently we produced a publication called Developing the future arrangements for local area agreements. It states: "““The negotiation will explore the extent to which the local priorities … match central departments’ views on improvement priorities and identify where compromises may be needed from both the locality and central government to strike the right central/local deal around agreed priorities for the local area””." For the first time we are trying to evolve a set of local priorities that matches national priorities in certain respects—they are often reflected in local situations—and, of course, some local priorities are genuinely local. There may be genuine pockets of worklessness and stubborn deprivation which are not found in the district next door. But there is a set of national priorities, such as improving health and well-being, which resonate and are relevant to every local authority. It is not much more complicated than that. The publication goes on to state: "““The 9 Government Offices will continue to represent Central Government in the negotiations with local authorities and their partners … In doing so the Government Office will draw on its knowledge of local objectives and any tensions that are likely to arise””." That is what the government offices do; they act as a mediator between central and local government, and they do it well. They are highly experienced, as well as being familiar with and on first name terms with most local authorities. We could have done this in other ways. We could have set out in the Bill that a draft LAA would have to be submitted to the government office at specific points in the run-up to submitting the draft to the Secretary of State. We could have prescribed that it had to be done through a set process of meetings that would have to take place. We could have built in a very prescriptive and rigid system, but we have not done so. I have in front of me an account of what Suffolk is doing. I shall not read it aloud, but I know that the noble Baroness will be quite interested. The processes Suffolk is working through seek to determine the conditions around partnerships and how central government departments are working together in order to identify in Whitehall the cross-cutting priorities for partnerships, not least what will make up the 200 indicators and how they can be reflected across sub-county targets. We have officers who are active partners in developing the negotiating process for the new-style LAAs, and local government representatives on the Designing New LAAs Project Board. This is a very pragmatic and honourable process, and it is not true to say that Secretaries of State will barge through all this and expect their wishes to prevail. That is to misread the nature of what we are trying to create. This is where and how we are serious about devolution.