Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

That was all very interesting and, I am afraid, confirms in me my view that this is all a shambles. It is not robust and clear at all. I want to find some polite words that I can use in this Committee. The Government are running amok in a field full of cows and do not quite know where to go. I was grateful for the partial support of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, but he really ought to stop standing up and saying that he is surprised to agree with me. He will find that we agree with each other on a large number of things. We should not be surprised, and should recognise when we disagree that that is okay. When I listen to the Minister on what the councils will do, practically, to carry out this duty, I find myself wondering what it is. I think that they will print some leaflets and have them available in appropriate places. Appropriate places would be town halls, libraries and leisure centres, and then they could send them out to community centres and things like that. However, a lot of the people who will pick up leaflets in those areas will not fit into the Minister’s categories. They will be people who have gone to the swimming pool because it is a good one, but they live in the next borough. Or they will be people who go to the library but do not actually live in the area. Perhaps they will be second-home owners who only live there part of the time. They might be on the electoral register. The Minister says that her categories are clear, but the question of who lives in an area is far from clear for people with two or more homes. This is not clear at all, and targeting leaflets in sensible places will reach people who are not in the Minister’s categories automatically and rightly. The Minister said that people have addresses and that a leaflet may be distributed or that the information might go in one of the free council newspapers that are churned out. That is fair enough, but they go door to door. They are not targeted at people who live there; they are targeted at the addresses that exist there at any given time. The Minister said that there will be an address for all these people. There will not be an address for students. Will the council get their addresses from educational institutions and mail them out to them wherever they live? There will be addresses for workers perhaps. I cannot think that the council will contact all the employers and everybody who has a shop in an area but does not live there, and find out where they live in order to mail them out. I do not see that that is practical. One cannot target those groups in the clear, specific way that the Minister is talking about. There will be a website. The obvious place to put information about who does what and how to get involved, which is what we are talking about, is the website, but that targets people with access to computers; it does not target people who happen to live, work or study there—although the people who study are more likely to look at computers than a lot of the people who live there. The Minister’s arguments do not stack up. I am in favour of targeting institutions or places where people go for information such as this. One can have displays and people can pick the information up. Many of those institutions are the places or facilities that people go to because they are good, such as swimming pools, but those people do not necessarily live in the relevant local authority. I understand that ““includes”” may not be a sensible word, but the Minister should abandon all attempts to define local people. Everybody knows who the local people are in a particular place. They belong to all the categories that we have been talking about and they do not necessarily live exactly within the boundary of the authority. The idea that vast resources will be devoted to targeting everybody individually is nonsense; the resources will not exist. Councils will target sensible means of communication such as websites or local newspapers and sensible places where people might pick up the information. Otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said, it would mean a totally unacceptable increase in the council’s costs. I am not in any way persuaded by what the Minister said, but I shall as always read it carefully. I do not know whether it is a sufficiently important issue to bring back at a later stage, but I ask the Government to think again about this. It does not matter too much in Chapter 1; but when we come to petitions, it will be crucial. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 14 withdrawn. Amendments 15 to 21 not moved. Clause 1 agreed. Clause 2 : Democratic arrangements of connected authorities Amendments 22 and 23 not moved. Clause 2 : Democratic arrangements of connected authorities Amendments 22 and 23 not moved.