Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

Amendment 47 brings us back to partnerships, which we have discussed to a large extent. The Minister has promised that she will look at them and see whether she can come back with something that makes sense and that will appease at least some of our concerns. The amendment would include in the list a local strategic partnership and a crime and disorder reduction partnership established under the Crime and Disorder Act. We thrashed those out previously, so I will not pursue them further at this stage. Amendments 48 and 57 attempt to define a partnership, and are worth looking at briefly. Amendment 57 would define a local strategic partnership as, "““a non-statutory, multi-agency partnership which cover the areas of a principal local authority which is a member of that partnership””." Local strategic partnerships have become such important bodies that the Government have to grasp the nettle and start including them in legislation. If they do that, they will have to find a definition for them. Here I offer a first approximation of what might be a reasonable definition of an LSP. As my noble friends said earlier, we all know that LSPs form an important part of the local political and governance landscape. For the Government to continue to pretend that they are just voluntary organisations set up at the local level, that people can have them or not and that they do not have to be considered in legislation, is no longer remotely tenable. One of the consequences of not including them is that some of the regulation they ought to be subject to cannot be put on a statutory footing. A further infuriating issue is that the rules and regulations covering declarations of interest that councillors have to make under the strict standards regime in place for elected councillors does not exist in relation to members of LSPs—unless, of course, a member also happens to be a councillor. Councillors on LSPs are subject to quite different rules than everybody else, and that cannot be right. This is just one example of the consequences arising from the fact that LSPs are not defined in legislation in a satisfactory way. LSPs are not going to go away, although some of us might wish them to do so. They will be there for at least the foreseeable duration and therefore they ought to be on the statute book. Here I am offering the Government a definition of what they are. If they think it is wrong, I would like to know why because I am very interested in what they think these bodies actually are. I beg to move.