Clause 86
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
5:00 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (Local Government & Community Cohesion), Department for Communities and Local Government; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham for raising this important matter. The role of Members of Parliament in this process has been debated and is rising up the policy agenda. Indeed, two local strategic partnerships in England are chaired by MPs and many others involve their MPs, formally and informally. However, as my hon. Friend recognised, MPs fall into a unique position. I always believe that, outside this place, we have influence but not power and that, inside it, we have one 650th of power, although somebody once said that there is a first among equals—but I am not going there.
Our unique status as legislators and MPs bears on the attitude to the amendment. Members of Parliament have experience both of the issues faced by local people and an understanding of the key national priorities. The Bill does not preclude any involvement for hon. Members in their localities’ local area agreement. I expect that MPs will have a significant influence in the establishment of the 35 or so targets for their areas. Members of Parliament are, perhaps, unique in having an overview of the whole place, not of an individual institution, which is the important thing that we bring to the table.
The amendment would introduce a formal role, laid in statute, for MPs in the LAA process with the effect that, when a responsible authority prepared a revision proposal, it would have to consult the MPs for the area covered by the LAA, as well as consulting each partner authority and such other persons as appear to it to be appropriate. We should not accept hon. Members being placed in a position where they must be consulted by their local authorities every time a revision proposal is being prepared. That is not in the spirit of the Bill. The decision about whether to consult MPs should be left, at that level of the process, to the discretion of the responsible authority and its elected members. It would not always be practical for MPs to be consulted, because MPs and their local elected members may not take the same position on local and national issues.
I can give some backing to my hon. Friend on the revision proposals, which require the approval of the Secretary of State, thereby ensuring that a mechanism is already in place to ensure that the national perspective is represented. In addition, the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament through the processes available to MPs, including the normal questioning, tabling motions and the rights and privileges that we have. That power exists.
The decision about whether to place the MP in a formal consultation role would change the relationship between the statutory bodies and ourselves. People in future might wish to go that way. The process that the Bill sets in place gives greater strategic powers to local authorities and their areas and, inevitably, challenges the roles of the MP, the back-bench councillor and the executive member. To include a Member of Parliament in a statutory consultation at this stage would create not just policy difficulties, but legal difficulties, given that we are the legislators that ultimately hold to account the local area agreements. My hon. Friend might find herself inadvertently in a worse position than she intended.
The policy of the Government and my Department is that, irrespective of party political persuasions, Members of Parliament should be involved, both formally and informally, with local authorities and other statutory bodies. That is part of our democracy. Most authorities and statutory bodies accept that that is quite right and proper. Indeed, good authorities welcome such involvement and recognise that, even when the relationship between the Member of Parliament and the local authority is fraught, it is part and parcel of our democracy, and that we should approach that fairly. I take very seriously indeed—as does the Secretary of State—any example of a local authority that does not facilitate the full involvement of its Member of Parliament in policy decisions. That is not a partisan point, but a point made on behalf of Parliament.