I am grateful to the Minister for his remarks. They do indeed clarify the position, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood would agree. They were a whole heap clearer than his earlier remarks, and I am sure that we shall await the Minister’s amendment. However, I want to say something in the spirit of putting into his mind things that may be helpful when we come to Report and when he comes to consider the amendments that he will move then.

If I understood the Minister aright in his concluding passage, he was suggesting that his amendmentswould provide for the local authority under some circumstances to take over the functions in some respects of some existing other body. I think that it is worth warning him that it is unlikely, in my view, that  such an amendment could succeed in achieving the object that we seek, and I shall explain why, in the hope that he will reflect further.

Where there is a current Government agency or devolved agency—a regional development agency,for example—it will typically have a remit that is established first in statute, then perhaps in regulation and thereafter in some kind of ministerial targets or edicts. I may be wrong, but I suspect that if the Minister attempts to draft a clause that gives the local authority the right not to seek the ability to redirect moneys but to seek to take over specific functions, that will have the effect that we do not want of putting the local authority, when exercising those functions, under the duty to follow the remit that the agency had.