I welcome the amendments in this group, which, as the Minister said, follows our earlier debate and concerns expressed that services could be transferred to a combined authority plus the regulatory functions which oversaw those services. So I am grateful to the Minister for bringing forward these amendments.
I wanted to clarify with the Minister just one point. We talked about the NHS but we then went wider, and this is a very wide amendment. I want to ensure that the provision would not have a negative impact where there are currently shared responsibilities for regulation. I am thinking of health and safety in particular, where both the Health and Safety Executive and a local authority share responsibilities. I would not want the amendment to get in the way of the flexibility that exists in those arrangements.
I would extend that to the practice of designation of one local authority as a primary authority. Let us take the example of a company such as Tesco, with stores in many parts of the country. One local authority can take a lead responsibility to deal with Tesco under health and safety legislation to avoid duplication and to ensure that there is a pretty standard approach. I take it that the amendment would not get in the way of sensible arrangements like that, where it is clear that the local authority has some regulatory functions. If the Minister is not able to respond now, I would quite understand if she wished to write to me on it.