Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

That is a good question. We are not imposing these requirements on the public bodies. In our dialogues, their representatives have invited the local authorities to assist them in this process. They welcome this approach as another way in which more people will know about what is possible, how they can be involved and how to take up these roles; it will promote more joint working and joint information. How the local authorities do that will be up to them, but a single point of information and contact could well alert people who are really interested in these sorts of bodies, and for whom an involvement in them would be a natural extension to what they are interested in—those who are working with victim support, for example, or who are doing other things in the community—to how they can be connected to local organisations. Is the noble Baroness saying that that is not worth doing, I wonder? Such is the narrow spectrum of the community from which these roles are normally drawn that anything we can do will be positive and helpful. The more effectively that we can promote opportunities, which we can do in different ways, the more likely we are to ensure that local people are informed and come forward. We can take a step forward and ensure that the roles represent the communities. Local authorities support our proposals to promote the possibility of taking part and becoming involved and to reach out to communities in different ways, particularly those that are currently underrepresented. Making the links between the different initiatives that aim to encourage people to take on civic roles is admirable and necessary. With regard to the clauses, we have tried to move the barrier and act with a light touch, whereas the effect of Amendment 63, for example, would be that the council would be required to promote understanding of these bodies, whether or not the information supplied by the bodies had relevance to what we have just said. The suggestion is that councils should promote the relevant roles without needing to bother the bodies concerned. We think that the way to make sure that the information is as accurate, relevant and useful as possible is to ensure that they work together. Amendment 67 would remove monitoring boards, courts boards and youth offending teams from being subject to the order-making power, but as I argued earlier, the provision is provided simply for the contingency—we do not expect this to be the case—that for some reason there is a lack of co-operation. Again, this is very much a power of last resort. I hope that my explanation has reassured the noble Lord that we have not just invented yet more work for local authorities in the area of civil responsibility where it is not needed. These bodies have a particular role to play in the community and for their own reasons want to be more diverse in their representation. This is simply a way for local authorities to assist them.