Clause 84
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
4:30 pm
Robert Syms (Shadow Minister (Local Government), Communities and Local Government; Poole, Conservative)
We now come on to targets. I think that we all welcome the approach of reducing the number of targets that local government must meet. In the past, central Government have always expected far too much from local government and, indeed, added a lot of costs to it by imposing targets.
We all know that in politics it is terribly easy to keep adding targets—to have a degree of target inflation. By limiting them to a specific number, the Government would have to knock a target out when they want to add another one. A core number of targets would therefore be maintained, which would set a higher and tougher test for those faced by local government and mean that we do not get a drift of more and more targets adding more and more bureaucracy. If the thrust of the Bill is devolutionary, we need to limit the burden on local government. Amendment No. 109 would help by insisting on a limit to the number of targets approved in the Government’s proposed arrangements. I could go on for a lot longer, but the hour is late, and I would be interested to hear the Government’s response to my amendment.