Sustainable Communities Bill

With some hesitation, I may in due course give way to the hon. Gentleman, but only after I have completed my point and responded to his hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac). It is entirely open to local authorities and to Ministers to make the provisions unbureaucratic simply by not taking actions of the kind that they are given the right, but not the duty, to take. However, in addition, if both parties to the transaction intend in a grown-up way to make the Bill work—I hope that if it were law, they would—there is no need for them to engage in vast bureaucracy, because the process is fairly simple. The local spending allocation description that the Government give will show for the first time—an amazing fact—what is being spent in each locality and on what by each Government agency. It will not take a long time for people locally to decide that much of that is fine, so they will have to focus only on the bits that they do not think are the highest priorities. Reaching a decision about how those highest priorities can be established is not an immensely bureaucratic process, unless people want to make it so. Similarly, the Minister who approaches the measure in a sensible frame of mind will say to himself or herself, ““In principle, local authorities are asked to make these decisions under the Bill. In principle, I don’t want to prevent a single one of them from doing so. Is there any here that have failed to consult their local population, have such a slim democratic mandate or are so manifestly lunatic that I have to take the political and parliamentary risk of going before Parliament and trying to explain my reasons for rejecting the local voice?”” I hope that in general, year on year, Ministers would not veto a single plan under the Bill. In those circumstances, it cannot be claimed that there will be a vast bureaucracy.