Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I put those descriptions in inverted commas. I was trying to work out the thinking of the people who drew up the lists. List 2 is merely set up by the first item in list 1, so I do not understand the difference. Perhaps the Government did not want the list to be too long; I do not know. It is not clear why the lists are exactly as they are. It is very clear why some of the bodies or persons in the lists are included. It is clear why the local authorities, parish councils and the Broads Authority are there. A series of amendments in this group and the next group but one probes why some bodies are included and why some are not. I hope that the Minister will take the amendments in the spirit in which they were tabled; they are an attempt to understand why the lists are there and to obtain a commitment, which she has already given, to come back with a letter about all these issues explaining what the democratic arrangements are and why the lists are there. That would be useful and, as my noble friend said earlier, interesting, because we do not quite understand these lists. Amendment 32 proposes the inclusion in the list of the joint board or joint committee of which the council is a member. In a sense, joint boards and joint committees are a bit old-fashioned; nowadays, they are called partnerships. Nevertheless, they are joint boards and joint committees and it is not clear why they are not included as a category. If a joint board or joint committee merely consists of local authorities, which is the traditional kind of joint board or joint committee, the Minister will tell us that the local authorities will have this duty and, therefore, they will have it collectively. However, saying why each individual is represented on the list, and how they are related, is different from saying what that body does and how it functions as a body in its own right. One example that I can think of is Elevate, the housing market renewal partnership in east Lancashire, or Pennine Lancashire, as we are told to call it. This body started off as a traditional partnership but is now a company. It has a board that, deplorably, consists merely of officer representation from each council, and a wider managing committee that consists of the leaders of the councils as well. That is traditionally described as a joint board. It is certainly a joint body. It is a corporate body in its own right and it is very important, because it disburses a lot of government funding—some £50 million to £60 million a year—in east Lancashire. In doing that, it has a considerable influence over the policies of the five councils—one unitary and four districts—which receive this money and carry out housing regeneration and housing market renewal schemes on its and central government’s behalf. However, the district councils are not just given the money; they get it on the basis of complex negotiated agreements to policies coming from the centre to the joint body, Elevate, and in turn from that body to the districts. If you do not agree with what the body is saying, you have to argue your point in negotiations. Elevate is an important public body that takes decisions which influence the way in which a lot of public money is spent, so it ought to be on the list relating to how governance works in Pennine Lancashire. On the basis of what is set out here, it is not clear that it would be. Those of us involved in local issues could come up with hundreds of examples such as this. It is important that all these things are included. Our concern is that, by being so prescriptive in the list in the Bill, the Government are excluding everything else. The Minister might say that this does not have to happen, but in practice it will. An onerous duty is being put on councils to produce and propagate this information, so a lot of them will do the minimum; they will do what they have to do to comply with the legislation. Amendment 33 probes how the functions of the Homes and Communities Agency fit in with bodies that have arrangements for involvement in and the delivery of local services. I am not sure how HaCA, as people are rather dismally starting to refer to it, fits in. Amendments 35 and 56 are slightly teasing in nature because they refer to academy schools and seek to put them on the same footing as, "““the managing or governing body of a maintained school in the principal local authority’s area””." We all know that academies are not maintained schools and do not have any democratic arrangements, but there seem to be some other bodies here that do not have them either. However, if we are referring to the system of publicly funded school governance in an area, why are they missed out? That is the question that the Government have to be asked. I beg to move.