Clause 41
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
6:15 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (Local Government & Community Cohesion), Department for Communities and Local Government; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)
Thank you, Mr. Benton. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove for tabling the amendment and giving us the opportunity to debate this issue. The first premise of his speech, and of the amendment, is that the Government want more local authorities to take up the mayoral model, but that is not our policy. Our policy is that local authorities should have strong executive arrangements and that it should be up to them to decide whether they are within the boundaries that we have debated today.
Neither the Government nor I see what the hon. Gentleman described as the loss of a referendum as a defeat. It is good that some local authorities have taken up referendums. When the result has been against the mayoral model, it has helped to enhance the democratic process and to reconnect the local authority with the people. To think that that is the Government’s objective is to misunderstand what we are trying to achieve in prompting the debate about executive arrangements. We do not prompt the debate about mayors in order to impose—via the front door, back door or a side door—a mayoral model. It is evident from our policy decisions and debates that that is not the case. We are saying to local authorities, “We want you to have more power, but we want you to have in place the arrangements that would best suit that purpose.”
At the heart of the debate is the hon. Gentleman’s second premise, on which we differ, although it is an honourable difference. When he moved the amendment, he said that there should be a requirement to hold a referendum. In other words, were the amendment to be passed, we in central Government and Parliament would tell a council what it had to do in such circumstances. There is a similar debate on the unitary proposals. We are not saying to councils what the public test has to be. If one is a devolutionist, one has to trust the council. I imagine that if a council were to resolve to move to a mayoral model and that model was unpopular in the area, the public would have their say at the ballot box—indeed, I am certain that that would be the case. Therefore, the premise on which the hon. Gentleman has based his case is not where the Government are coming from. There may be, or may have been, people in the Government who thought that it would be a good idea to have mayors everywhere and to impose their introduction, but that is not Government policy.