Sustainable Communities Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Third time. I would like to place on record my thanks to a few people. Taking a private Member’s Bill through this place is an enormous privilege but, as the Minister has said, it is also a daunting task for a new Member, and I simply would not have been able to do it without the help of a number of people, starting with the Clerks in the Public Bill Office, who have shown extraordinary patience with me. I should also like to thank those hon. Members who served on the Committee, many of whom are here today, not least my sponsors, the hon. Members for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who have given me great support throughout the process. I should particularly like to place on record my respect for and gratitude to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who has educated me as to what a Parliamentary Private Secretary can achieve—I had always wondered—and set a benchmark for loyalty, tenacity and the power to persuade when one has no power to do so. I know that she has enjoyed the process. We would not be where we are without her support, and our friends at Local Works would also like to place on record their thanks to her. I certainly thank the Minister. He had to juggle a number of balls throughout this complicated process, but he always argued his case clearly and was open and extremely constructive. He was kind about my political prospects and I have no doubt that his star will continue to rise and that he will grace shadow Cabinets for many years to come. Last but not least, I am sure that my sponsors would want to join me in expressing thanks to Local Works, for which the Bill is the culmination of a four-year campaign. Without the group’s tenacity and its success in building coalitions, which spanned organisations from the women’s institute to the Campaign for Real Ale, to put pressure on the Government, I doubt that we should have reached this stage today. The Bill is an honest attempt to help communities address the social problems that arise from community decline and the loss of local services. To some degree, the debate today has been technical and wrapped in an envelope of questions about localism, governance and the devolution of power, but the Bill’s starting point was the need to respond to the clear social problems of community decline, which is, as we realise, market-driven. However, we should not forget that loss of local services inspired the coalition, rather than questions about localism or how we govern ourselves. The starting point for the Bill was a desire for a policy response to the problems—that is the passion outside this place. One could say that if people want to support the high street they should just get their wallets out and walk down it, but we need a policy response from this place. That is the driver of the Bill. Part of that response must be central Government’s responsibility to pull strategy together in a coherent framework—what we call a national action plan. The point of the Bill was not to be prescriptive but to create the mechanics to do something important—to make sure that the strategy was driven from the bottom up with the full engagement of the communities we represent. We have made considerable progress in achieving that aim. The main point of the Bill is to give communities real influence in shaping their future. The Bill gives greater transparency to the spending of public money in local areas, which is important, but we intend to pursue the real prize—to give people the opportunity to influence how that money is spent. We had a useful debate about new clause 6 and the Minister has given us assurances from which we can take comfort, so we will consider them. We have made real progress today. The Bill is more workable than the version we debated on 19 January, although we still need some clarification about money issues and new clause 6. The Bill is not an end; it is only the start—the first ratchet in a process that will empower people to be more engaged in building and sustaining their communities. We have started an irreversible process and I commend the Bill to the House.