Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, which I shall come back to in a minute. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said that our case is that lots of local authorities are doing this already. With regard to the reference in Chapter 1 to the duty to promote public understanding, we are not particularly making that case. Some authorities may do it very well and most will do it to some extent, but what is proposed in the Bill is quite new for most local authorities. That is why we are keen that it should be done as well as possible. It should not be overly onerous—an issue we might have to raise another time—and it should provide useful information to people, not useless information. That is the basis of what we are saying. We are in favour of the fundamental principle behind Chapter 1, but we are against these five pages of detailed prescription. We do not think local authorities are doing this already. The noble Lord also talked about diversity of approach and best practice. He said that we have to ensure that best practice covers the whole country. The problem is that if central government ties down local authorities and councils to the degree they always want to, you never find out what best practice is because everyone is doing something the same way—the way the Government think is best practice at the time they impose all this detailed regulation. The only way you can find out what is best practice is by allowing what the noble Lord described as a diversity of approach across the country. We are in favour of local democracy and the diversity of approach that it brings, along with the understanding that some councils will do things well and some less well. That is a matter of local democracy which cannot be avoided, but it also produces best practice in some areas. There might be different best practices, a best practice here and a best practice there, and both may be good—the rest of the country could learn from them. The Government approach, however, is a top-down Stalinist system where everyone ends up with something that is probably fairly good but lacks vision and diversity, and never moves on. That is our view. I accept that the amendment is at the slightly extreme end of the spectrum of what I am trying to say, but for goodness’ sake tell councils what you want them to do and let them get on with it. Stop trying to tie them down in detailed rules and regulations. And, yes, if an elected council believes that some local organisations should be put under the duties set out in the Bill, that should be their right; they know their situation and they know which local organisations need to be on the list. I do see what is wrong with that. Equally, they will look at this list and say, ““Some of these organisations do not apply here, and therefore we are not going to do it””. It may be that this argument can be pursued better under the scrutiny sections. I do not know; we will look at that. For the time being, I am disappointed in the Government’s response, although not terribly surprised. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 51 withdrawn. Amendments 52 and 53 not moved.