Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I entirely agree that the amendments are important and I appreciate the spirit in which they are brought forward. Obviously, we want to ensure that overview and scrutiny committees are able to hold public service providers to account. Unfortunately, we do not think that the amendments are necessary for that. I will try not to duplicate what was said in the Commons Committee, but it is difficult, because the arguments offered there were sound. I will try to find different language. However, I took the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about how overview and scrutiny committees could be seen as rather toothless. Part of the Bill’s purpose is to build on the Local Government Act 2000, as we have, to make three changes that will toughen up the overview and scrutiny committees and give them more power. Of those three ways, one essentially requires local authorities—executive members and members—to respond when called to a committee; they are required to attend and to respond to what the overview and scrutiny committee says. What have now come into the frame are the partner authorities; in the Bill is a requirement that information should be provided from partner authorities connected to the local area agreements and that they should sit together. There is also the duty to have regard to the report and recommendations of the overview and scrutiny committee. Those are three important changes that toughen up the OandS committees. The point about contractors is, however, important. As the noble Baroness said, a lot of work is now done through commissioning. Our principle, which is why we cannot accept the amendment, is the importance of those who are commissioning—the local authorities and public service providers—actually being responsible for the quality and delivery of the work that they commission. Once you start asking contractors to turn up and account for themselves, you have let the contracting body off the hook. It is terribly important, given the pattern of commissioning, that you get the responsible people to come and explain why they actually contracted those people, if it turns out that they have not got the capacity to deliver or whatever. Sometimes it is no good asking the IT provider to come. You want to know who made the decision, on what grounds and on what evidence. We might find ourselves in a position where we are allowing partner authorities to shift responsibility. It is perfectly open to the overview and scrutiny committees to request anyone to appear before them. If they feel that they have not got to the bottom of something in this situation, then they can call the contractor to come. It is a slightly different context, but there is nothing to stop them doing that. Furthermore, when local authorities contract, they have to specify in the contract those arrangements that would enable them to obtain information from the contractor, so that they in turn are able to respond to a request from an overview and scrutiny committee for information. A means for councillors to obtain information from contractors exists. We have provision for making information available. On those grounds, I have difficulty with Amendment No. 215. Amendments Nos. 216 and 217 concern the requirements on partner authorities to respond to an overview and scrutiny committee. In response to Amendment No. 216, about partner authorities being required to attend to provide information, we think that the regulation-making powers under Clause 123 are sufficiently wide enough and that they address the question of attendance. We intend to provide in the planned regulations for partners to appear before scrutiny committees. However, I think it wrong to impose a blanket requirement on partners to attend in person. I take the point that on some days you have to look a person in the face in order to test out resolve, commitment and so on, but I do not think that where councillors are working in partnership with public service providers it is all that helpful to allow overview and scrutiny committees to compel attendance. In some instances they are statutory bodies in their own right. We do not want to destabilise or undermine relations. We think it right to provide discretion about whether there is oral evidence or a written submission. My impression is that if the written evidence is not sufficient, they could always call for oral evidence afterwards. I should have thought that that option remained open to them, but it may be appropriate in some circumstances simply to have written submissions. That would certainly reduce the work of the committee. Amendment No. 217 requires partner authorities to have regard to any overview and scrutiny report. As I have explained, overview and scrutiny committees have the power to make reports to their executive on any matter that affects their area—quite rightly. We all probably agree that where the councils have formal partnership arrangements with local partners, it is right that councillors should be able to send reports to those local partners to which they must have regard. The Bill requires that where councils and local public service providers work together on LAAs, local partners will be required to have regard to reports relating to the LAA targets. That is the focus and what they would want to be chasing up and ensuring that they are getting delivery on. It would not be appropriate to allow councillors to require partner authorities to have regard to wider reports on any matter relating to their areas. That strikes me as certainly losing focus. I could imagine, for example, that a council might do a report on global warming—that would be forward-looking in some respects—but requiring partners to respond to that report would be taking it beyond their scope and taking up time that they might be rather short of. We need to strike a balance, focusing on matters where partners work with local authorities, rather than exposing them to the potential burden of responding to a whole range of reports. Once again, I hope that we have struck the right balance in the Bill. I hope that noble Lords are satisfied with those explanations.