Lord Lansley (Con)

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, not only for her supportive comments on all these amendments but for her participation in the Committee’s scrutiny. We are grateful to the Delegated Powers Committee for the time and trouble that it takes in drawing these things carefully to our attention. I will not dwell on this. I entirely understand many of the things that the Minister was saying. No part of these amendments is seeking to frustrate the Government’s intentions through these four separate parts of the Bill. The point is technical but simple. At any future stage, future primary legislation can take account in that primary legislation of whether it may be necessary for the powers in this Act to, for example, change the functions of mayors and strategic authorities or to revise the local government reorganisation arrangements in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act. It can take account of those and extend those powers to make statutory instruments to amend them in that primary legislation itself. However, we should not, before that legislation has even come here, give a power to amend it. That would significantly restrict our ability in future legislation to anticipate how that legislation can be used and to scrutinise it in the proper way at the time. I will of course withdraw my amendment but I hope that the Government will come back, not only having responded to the Committee but in order to change this language on each of these occasions to the same as that in Clause 88. However, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 180A.