Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

These are two very interesting Opposition amendments. The first would add regional assemblies, and the second would add local strategic partnerships and other partnership bodies to the list of relevant authorities for the purposes of the ethical regime for local government, which would mean that members of these bodies would be subject to the provisions of the code of conduct that members of relevant authorities are required to follow. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for resisting the temptation to take us on an excursion to the future regional assemblies. I will observe the same discipline. There is no doubt in my mind that it is important that members of regional assemblies should follow high standards of conduct and good practice so that they act transparently and accountably. My difficulty is with a blanket extension of the national code of conduct to members of these bodies, as the amendment suggests. That is unnecessary for the following reasons. Regional assemblies are not currently subject to a statutory code of conduct, but two-thirds of members of the assemblies are already covered by a code of conduct as they are members of local authorities. That code applies to them when they act as representatives of their authority on other bodies such as the assemblies. In addition, I understand that the conduct of the remaining third of members who are not representatives of their local authorities are also subject to a code, as the assemblies have adopted their own voluntary codes of conduct that broadly reflect the terms of the model code for local authorities, although not on a statutory basis. I therefore hope that that overlapping system takes care of the noble Baroness’s anxieties. The noble Lord’s amendments explore a very interesting situation in relation to the LSPs, but it is interesting because of the nature of local authority partnerships as a whole and the interrelationship between the people who sit on those bodies and their respective responsibilities, because they sometimes wear two, three or even four hats. I have to give him the answer that he expected, which in essence is that LSPs are not legal bodies and so cannot be covered by the code in the same way. We cannot place a duty on an LSP for that reason. I dispute the assertion that there is a void. I spoke at some length a couple of days ago about how important the LSPs were, not least as bodies that formulate and articulate the local area agreements. They are incredibly important, but they are very variable. We cannot put such institutions under the code in the same way. Moreover, each public statutory partner to an LSP has its own structure and rules, and carries that code with it. As the noble Lord said, local authority members certainly would. Each organisation must therefore take measures to ensure that its LSP representatives act appropriately. The list of partner authorities in Clause 106 includes a number of bodies that are already covered by the code of conduct. It also includes persons and members of bodies, such as the chief of police and members of the local probation board, to whom it would be inappropriate to extend the local government code of conduct. However, I do find the noble Lord’s argument about the LSPs very interesting, and, although I cannot promise to do anything, I can promise to think about it and to discuss it and other issues to which it gives rise with the department.