Sustainable Communities Bill

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall make some progress. As I hope that I have made clear, the Government accept the desirability of the intention behind the Bill. It is important that the Bill is debated, but we have some serious concerns about it. Our advisers have expressed concerns about its drafting, as its authors would expect me to say because they are open about its deficiencies in that respect. We are also concerned about the chosen methods. If I may, I shall concentrate on the latter. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) spoke about the Secretary of State’s powers of veto, to which the right hon. Member for West Dorset also referred; indeed, the Secretary of State is mentioned nearly 40 times in the seven pages of the main part of the Bill. Of course, central Government still have an important role, such as in setting national priorities, making sure that standards in some key areas are maintained across the country and setting out the framework for delivery. Any Government face two paradoxes in this debate. The first paradox is between devolution and fairness: on the one hand, people criticise policies when there is a perceived or real postcode lottery, and on the other, they call for devolution. It is not always possible to reconcile the two. The right hon. Member for West Dorset went straight to the heart of the matter when he said that power is increasingly translated through money, not through the law. That leads to the second paradox in the devolution debate: how to determine the allocation of resources. I imagine that those in charge of local action plans would come up with arguments for money, or arguments for a reprioritisation of local expenditure, in a way that might not be compatible with the arguments against a postcode lottery. That seems to me to strike at the heart of the debate.