Member

The noble Lord asked about the wider devolution agenda. It is important that we remember that these proposals were put forward and carefully weighed against the criteria that had been preset by the department. One of those criteria—the noble Lord mentioned adult care services and children’s services—is that it is very important that the transition is effective and efficient. The criteria were taken very seriously in the consideration of the proposals that have been put forward. I can say that colleagues in local government took their responsibility for setting out exactly how that was going to be done extremely seriously; I looked at all the papers for this, and it was clear that our colleagues are very anxious to make sure that there is no disruption during the transition process.