Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

The last point was important and I thank the noble Baroness for dealing with it with great care. It is not clear in the Bill that what she says is true. The Bill states that the two lists involve connected authorities and she is right to say that it does not state that everything else is not connected. It is not clear at all that the local authorities have a duty to provide a comprehensive description of what happens and how people can get involved that includes these matters but also might include many other things as well. An amendment that we shall consider later tackles this matter. I do not wish to pursue this argument at this stage, but I would be interested to hear the noble Baroness’s justification for saying that it is clear to anyone reading the Bill that an overall general description is required, not just of those bodies included in the lists. Some local authorities will do the minimum and we do not want that. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, wanted to remove FE colleges from the list and I wanted to include academies. In many ways, both are in the same category: they are independent incorporated bodies that are substantially funded by the state and provide local education services as part of the general state system but are not controlled by the local authority. Apart from what the constitution of any particular institution might state, they have no general democratic arrangements. The local authorities and other local bodies are not represented in them. Any local democracy that there might be will refer to staff and students and no one else. In many ways FE colleges and academies are similar, although ideologically they are at different poles. To include one and not the other is not rational. This comes back to the lists. We are saying that there should be no list, but there should be general descriptions of the duties. The Minister says that, if there were no list, we would be probing what might be included; she is absolutely right, but we might be making suggestions for illustration and understanding, not because we wanted a list. However, once there is a list, there is an issue of prescription. The Minister said that the Government are not being prescriptive, but that is not true; they are being extremely prescriptive. I have not counted how many are on the list, but it goes from (a) to (m)—