Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

On the subject of the amounts, I take the noble Lord’s point about inflation, but these amounts are intended to act as broad indicators of material financial decisions, not precise limits. It is relevant to keep the same amounts in place; it makes the amount at which they have to be referred reasonable and that is a rational way of doing things. On his point around the date, if we did not have a specific date, it might complicate the accountancy practices. I will look into that and come back to him on that point. On the issues around the mayoral elections, the decision was made to make sure that we have the new authorities vested and in place, with a chance to establish themselves. They are delivering key public services. There is a lot of work to do, as the noble Lord has pointed out to me on many occasions—and I properly understand that point—before the mayoral elections take place. We know that it is a tight timetable but, to be honest, in my 30 years in local government, nobody has bitten the bullet and sorted this out. It is time we got the foundations of local government into single unitary authorities, so that everybody across the country has the same type of local authority. That is why we are moving forward at pace with the timetable. To conclude, the instrument makes a small but necessary technical amendment to ensure that existing safeguards on financial decisions operate effectively during local government reorganisation. It has been developed in response to engagement with councils and tested with local government representatives. I hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting the draft order, which I commend to the Committee.