Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I think I have the answer to my basic question, but I shall come to that in a minute. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, that the words ““and other relevant functions”” is vague and kite-flying. It was put in precisely to generate a probing debate, and she was quite right to pick it up. This comes back to the role of the council in promoting candidates to itself in any way. That is something that I have always been uneasy about; to put a duty on an authority to go out and get certain kinds of people or minorities or achieve diversity is an awkward duty because you are asking the authority to determine its own composition when it is meant to be a democratic authority elected by the people. That is a tangential question, but it is part of the problem. If councils and other public bodies are to spend quite a lot of resources of different sorts in getting more women, ethnic minorities, young people—more Welsh people in Wales, perhaps, or more English people in Wales, or whatever the underrepresented minority is in a particular part of Wales—they are inevitably going to get involved in a political question. Some of those groups of people will be oriented more to some political parties than to others. The whole area causes me some unease. If it is going to happen, we need to be clear about it. The Bill says that the council has to tell people who might want to be members what members of the principal local authority do. I can tell them what they do a lot of the time. They go to political party group meetings and take part in the local political party as part of their involvement in the community. That is what they do. If you say to people that they can be councillors on a council with three political parties, that there is not much chance of anyone else getting elected in the near future and that if they want to be councillors but do not want to go to local ward meetings or party meetings, take part in party campaigns in the area or go to the party group meetings, when they go to council meetings, unless they are very brave and have very strong views on things, they will very often vote how they are told to vote by their political party. In a more democratic party such as ours, of course, people go to the meetings where it is decided how to vote and take part in that process, then vote voluntarily with the majority. However, it works, they are working within a political context, which is what people will have to be told. People who want to be councillors could also be told that, while they might be elected as an independent, with a lot of work and a lot of effort, if they were they would be on a council where everything was run through the political parties. They would not be part of the council administration in the remote future, unless there happened to be a fluky election where they personally held the balance of power, in which case for a year they might be, until it changed. That is the truth; it is the real world, and there is no point in not telling people about the real world. The provision says that people must be told what support is available. If the political groups and parties are any use they will be a source of great support to the councillor. If you are not a member of a political party, you would not have that support and resource. Particularly if it was a big council, you would be on your own, in the wilderness. You might have the strength of personality to make some impact, but it would be much more difficult than if you are a member of a political party, unless you joined a dreadful, highly authoritarian political party and were just treated as muck as a Back Bencher, told what to do and not given any influence at all. That exists in all parties. It is the real world. My question was whether Section 2 of the 1985 Act applies to giving sensible advice on the role of political parties in a particular area. Is that banned? I think that the answer from the Minister was that it is not banned. If that is a sensible thing to do in that area, within the reasonable limits of providing factual information, it would be possible. Both Ministers are nodding their heads; I shall put that on the record. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 8 withdrawn.