Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister for what she herself said was a full, but helpful, reply. First, I respond to the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, who suggested that because I had been a councillor for rather a long time, I am perhaps a little resistant to change. The record will not show that he said that with a smile on his face, and I hope that he was not too serious. There is nothing in this part of the Bill that represents a challenge either to me or to the local authority on which I sit. Certainly, my authority has been undertaking all the significant measures in here since shortly after the Liberal Democrats won control of it in 1986. Most of what we implemented in the 1980s we probably took from a handbook written by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in a previous incarnation. There is no challenge here, and neither I nor my colleagues are in any way resistant to what is in it. Our resistance, if resistance it is, is to the fact that it is in a Bill, not to the suggestions of what we should do. All good authorities, of all political persuasions and none, have, I hope, been promoting local democracy for many years. For many years, we have had increasingly better schemes for receiving petitions, as my noble friend Lord Greaves made clear. Certainly, over my time in local government, the opportunities for involvement in local democracy have increased hugely and people have taken advantage of that. We have had reference to turnouts. I wish that I had brought my book of London election results with me. I looked before the Second Reading debate and turnouts now are not much different—in fact they are slightly higher—from the 1960s and 1970s in London. My noble friend Lord Greaves tells me that it is very similar in the rest of the country. They rose to a peak in 1990. Polling day in 1990 was a sunny day and there was also a change to local government finance at that time which was causing a degree of controversy. In all of this, my noble friends and I hope that we are not giving any impression of complacency or the feeling that we do not think there is a problem. I acknowledged at Second Reading and I will do so again now that there is a problem. My noble friends and I have spent most of our adult lives trying to promote active and participatory democracy. I certainly do not feel that I have succeeded yet—far from it. It happens much less than it ought to. In part, our difficulty is not in acknowledging the problem, which is widely recognised in the debate that we have had in Committee, but in identifying the best solutions. I am far from convinced, frankly, that doing what is in the Bill, which many good authorities have been doing in one way or another for years, sadly without enough effect, is actually the right solution. Perhaps this is not the time and place for a long debate about the right solution, but our problem is not what is in the Bill but the fact that it is in a Bill. It is much better left to local authorities to continue to develop their own schemes for local participation and to strive for that end as all good local authorities do. I acknowledge that there are poor local authorities, probably under the control of all parties and they are as much condemned by the good authorities that they are letting down as by any Minister, civil servant or Member of either House of Parliament. We will continue this debate for many hours to come in some detail, but I hope that I have set out our position a little more clearly. I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Graham, is nodding in assent. I have achieved one objective, at least.