Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

We have touched on a fertile seam about partnerships, which will return in later groups—for example, when we look at Amendments 47, 48 and 57. I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, made about the acronyms that now clutter the important partnerships. The range of partnerships has evolved over the past few years to deliver services that may previously have been delivered separately and to bring people together who may have been doing much the same job with different sorts of funding in different parts of the local authority. This growth in partnership has been necessary and evolutionary, and is a progressive way forward. It is a factor to be reckoned with and, in the context of what we want to achieve in Clauses 1 and 2, we have to be sure that people are aware of the range of mechanisms that shape, influence and deliver local services. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was right to bring this forward. Many of them are done through partnerships, and the LSP is critical to that. We encouraged that in the local government White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities, and in the report of the Lyons inquiry into the future of local government. They are a fundamental part of the way in which councils, the police and other bodies make joint decisions about services that affect people and they play a key role in identifying local authority and policy responses through the LSP. LSPs are challenging organisations that have a uniquely important role because they bring so many statutory and voluntary agencies together. When they work, they work extremely effectively. As well as the LSPs, there is a range of specific partnerships to co-ordinate services for children or older people, or to regenerate an area within the local authority, as well as the crime and disorder partnerships that the noble Lord has already identified. I am in sympathy with what he is addressing. However, we do not need additions to the duties to bring them within scope. Before I go on with that, in the past two debates I have been struck by the fact that noble Lords opposite are wrestling with what we wrestled with in framing the Bill. They want more detail and definition and for things to be clearer, but, at the same time, they do not want to expand the Bill. That would be the effect of putting some of this detail in it. In the first debate, the noble Lord was scathing about having eight or whatever pages on this, but in exploring these issues, we are exploring the necessity for the sort of detail that will enable people to get on and do the job without being hampered by confusions and ambiguities, and without overloading them by being overprescriptive. While other partnerships and bodies may or may not be part of the formal decision-making mechanisms of the council, they fall within the definition of arrangements that the council has made to enable people to influence its decisions. For example, although LSP decision-making arrangements may not be the same as the council's decision-making process, the council will clearly be involved in what the LSP decides and therefore, so far as there are any arrangements for people to get involved in LSP decision-making, they would be covered by our duty. That is the same answer that I gave to the previous set of amendments. They are covered by the duty, although not explicitly. The noble Lord is dissatisfied with that definition; I have listened to what he said. Essentially, it is part of the general values which we put on this activity and it is what we wanted to encompass. As such, when we ask local authorities to provide information on their functions and democratic arrangements, we consider that, and when we ask them to provide information on the functions and democratic arrangements of health, the police and the other connected authorities, we are asking them to include information on the partnerships in which they are involved. On the final element of Amendment 5, the noble Lord proposes that local authorities should provide information on the democratic arrangements for other bodies in which the authority takes part and to which it has voluntarily devolved functions or in which it voluntarily shares functions with other participating bodies. We are not sure exactly what he means. If he is referring to delegated functions then that is not necessary as an authority has no power to delegate functions to any partnership. Where functions are delegated within the structure of the authority to officers, committees and members, the decisions made in this official capacity would already be covered by our definition of democratic arrangements. So where local authorities have decided to contract out services to other providers, we would expect that the decisions made by the council about delivery of those services here—say, bin collection—would be included. I am afraid to say ““bin collection”” in any context now, so I shall have to find a substitute. On the other hand, the service providers themselves are independent, possibly commercial, entities which do not have public functions and would not have democratic arrangements in which to be involved. The noble Lord seeks to ensure that partnerships are included both within the requirement on local authorities set out in Clause 1(1) and by adding to the list of connected authorities. As I have said, we have covered that. We would expect local authorities to be sensible in how they interpret this so that if the decision-making of each individual participant is within our provisions, they would also include information about how they go about making decisions within the partnership itself. That is why we think that guidance will be a help. It will allow us to provide a clear steer to local authorities about the scope of information we expect them to provide, which will include partnership working. It makes better sense to do that in guidance than to put that kind of detail in the Bill. I hope that the noble Lord agrees with me.