Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her slight encouragement to my noble friend Lord Greaves. My noble friend and I were dealing with the same issue, although one of us at a very local sense and the other regional. In essence, as local authorities work in partnership with a wide variety of bodies, it is becoming increasingly obvious that having one set of processes governing the conduct of the elected members and another set governing the conduct of those who are not is becoming problematic. It seems to me that this can be approached in two ways. One either has a stringent code of conduct which applies to everyone or something approaching the situation described by the Minister for regional assemblies; that is, a voluntary code of conduct which everyone knows and understands. Certainly, from these Benches, that would be our preferred option. Local arrangements arrived at voluntarily by all the partners, and applicable to all the partners, would be a much better way forward. The real issue and the reason that we have tabled these amendments is to bring to the attention of the Government the fact that one set of rules applies to councillors, which contains fairly heavy sanctions, while those same rules do not apply to others. However, we will read carefully what the noble Baroness has said and will wait to hear the Government’s thinking on this. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.