Sustainable Communities Bill

My hon. Friend has asked for a specific example. If he has the time and inclination, he might like to read the record of our deliberations in Committee, where we went through a working example of a specific case. I do not know how active Business Link is in Shipley, but consideration was given in Committee to the proposition that if a local authority and a local community felt that Business Link was not doing an adequate job and that there was a better way of deploying the money that Business Link was spending to support local businesses in the area, they should feel free to make the case for the function and resources of Business Link to be reallocated. The crucial question was whether the local authority, if that was the body to which the function was reallocated, should be free to implement its own policy, perhaps for supporting small local businesses. It might, for example, decide that it wanted to keep post offices open and reallocate money for that purpose. There would be an active dialogue with Business Link on the issue, and if Business Link did not co-operate, the local authority would have the right under the new clause to go to the Secretary of State and say, ““We have a mandate from the community. We believe that this is the right strategy for supporting local businesses in our area, and we want the function and resources to be reallocated to us.”” I hope that that example helps my hon. Friend.