Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am grateful to noble Lords for contributing to this debate. It is important that we understand the reasons for this definition as opposed to any of the other definitions suggested by the amendments or in debate. I shall explain the intention behind the existing definition of local people and the care that has gone into drawing it up. Members of the Committee know that we are looking to require local authorities to help local communities to understand more about democratic processes, and so on. That includes all parts of the community—young people and old, those who are working and studying and those not in work, people with disabilities and all ethnic and faith communities. As I have said several times already this afternoon, this is about invigorating local democracy and the control that people feel they can exercise over everything from the quality of care for older people to their councils taking action to mitigate climate change. We have to balance that, as it is a large ambition, to ensure that we are fair to and with local authorities as well. We do not want to create a duty that is overly burdensome to local authorities—and noble Lords would certainly try to stop us doing that. We also want to establish a clear and understandable definition, and we believe that these terms, ““live””, ““work”” and ““study””, in their normal understanding, do that for us. One reason why we cannot just say ““local people”” is, because, without a definition, as my noble friend Lord Borrie said, it would be very unclear who was included. It would make it very difficult for local authorities to know whether they had complied with the duty. Clearly, that is going to be extremely important. Consistent with the overarching approach that we are taking to trust local authorities to interpret this in a way that makes sense and in the spirit of the duties they owe to the communities, we have arrived at this definition. But it is also important that we provide such help as we can through guidance that will identify the nature of those groups of people whom local authorities should seek to reach. We will also suggest some methods to provide the relevant information to the local people. On Amendment 14, I appreciate how the noble Lord has wrestled with this issue. It is complicated and it is important that we get it as right as we can. Amendment 14, by using the word ““includes””, potentially broadens the group of people to whom the principal local authority is to promote understanding. The noble Lord argued that if there is going to be such a duty, it should reach the widest number. Amendments 15 to 19 seek to alter the definition from ““live””, ““work”” and ““study”” to one that is cumbersome and wordy, and includes people who live or own property or use facilities provided by the authority, "““or who are otherwise entitled to be registered as a local government elector for the authority or who are qualified to be a member of the authority””." In choosing that wording, the noble Lord has abandoned any interest in people who work or study in the area. In so far as we are trying to provide an opportunity for young people who are engaged in education at all levels, we thought it important to include that opportunity, because they are young people who will be directly and intimately affected by any changes in the education system and who would want to get involved in any improvements. That would include any university students. We also think that the terms that the noble Lord has come up with are extremely burdensome. With the term ““use facilities”” in Amendment 18, where does it end? Where are the boundaries here? Is it reasonable to try to impose a duty on local authorities to promote democracy for people who happen to be walking down one of the local streets, using the facilities? You could interpret it as broadly as that. Should Westminster City Council have a legal duty to promote democracy to the thousands of foreign visitors who happen to pass through the area during the course of a year? Should an authority be under a legal obligation to respond to petitions raised by transit passengers through an airport located in their area? Obviously, we would like to see Westminster doing all those things, but we are not persuaded that it is reasonable to impose legal obligations on it to do so. On the second definition, ““owning property””, our definition will capture the huge majority of people who own property and live in the area. The addition in the amendment puts an unnecessary burden on local authorities to promote democracy to people who do not live in the area but who may own property. That raises some major issues about how that could be exercised. Again, it is an unnecessary burden to place on local authorities. We are looking, for example, at people who do not technically reside in the area. They could be absentee landlords or people with second homes. Do we want those people to understand the benefits of democracy? Of course we do. However, to bring that within the existing definition effectively is an onerous burden. We considered all sorts of formulations. We have not just thrown this together at the drop of a hat. We considered the term, ““on the electoral register””, but that excluded too many people: the young, the homeless and the recently arrived. We considered the term ““use services””; that was too broad. The one thing that ““live, work or study”” has to commend it is that, in each case, there is an address that an authority can be sure either is or is not within the area. It provides a full scope for people who have a genuine interest and are genuinely affected by the services there. Linking to an address is also a clear criterion. It would be pointless and extremely expensive otherwise to pin down exactly who is to be included in this sort of definition. We do not want council officers to have to be engaged in the exercise of tracking down every last person. We want to give them, as simply as possible, an indication of the categories of people that they should be aiming their activities at. That is what we have done. With the best will in the world, the amendments are not a substantive improvement on that. We would clearly want to offer additional help in the guidance to ensure that everybody had a clear understanding of what we meant. We would certainly be consulting on that. That would include suggestions of how local authorities could provide the relevant information across the whole range of media now available to them. We have tried hard to deliver the intent of the clauses in this definition. I appreciate the noble Lord’s effort and how he has opened up the debate. I am sorry that I cannot accept his amendments; I genuinely think we have something that is about as robust and useful to local authorities as it could be.