Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I shall speak also to Amendments 126 and 128 and the Question whether Clause 18 should stand part. This group concerns a smallish number of miscellaneous issues which, nevertheless, need to be put on the record and probed. Amendment 91A brings us back to our old friend, the definition of a valid petition. Clause 12(1)(a) says that, for a petition to be valid, it must be ““addressed to the authority””. I simply want to add the words ““or presented”” so that it reads that a valid petition has to be ““addressed or presented to the authority””. I am not sure what the Government will say ““addressed”” means but, in my view, it means an address written down; in other words, at the minimum, it should say ““to East Sussex County Council”” or ““to Cornwall County Council””, or whichever authority the petition is being presented to, yet a large number of informal petitions that come in and have to be treated properly are not. I read out two yesterday and shall repeat them: "““We as residents of Mansfield Crescent want a one-way system””." That is not addressed to anyone. The second reads: "““We the undersigned want to stop the speeding traffic on Chapel House Road””." That is not addressed to anyone. I think that they were presented separately to different committees of Pendle Borough Council. They might have been presented to the town councils in Brierfield or Nelson, or they might have been presented directly to the authority which has powers to do these things—that is, the county council. However, they were not addressed to anybody, so they would not have been valid for that reason, according to the Government’s scheme, if the word ““addressed”” means what I think it means. Amendment 126 relates to Clause 18. Some of the supplementary provisions in that clause are worthy of discussion. Under Clause 18(2)(a), the principal local authority’s petition scheme may include, "““provision relating to petitions which are not valid petitions””." I do not understand the purpose of these eight pages if they can be ignored so that the petition scheme can apply to invalid petitions. If there is to be a detailed prescription of a valid petition, rather than telling local authorities that they may include petitions that do not fit the precise criteria laid down—for example, because every signature is not dated, which is one of the more ludicrous ideas—they ought to have a duty to consider them. Otherwise, there is a great risk that a lot of valid petitions—for example, for a one-way system in Mansfield Crescent or for traffic calming on Chapel House Road and hundreds of thousands of others all over the country—would be excluded because they do not fit. Therefore, I propose the insertion of ““shall”” instead of ““may”” in line 31. Amendment 128 provides that a petition that clearly relates to a number of different authorities can be photocopied, either by the petitioners or by the council that first receives it, and that those photocopies should then be regarded as a true copy of the petition. The Newcastle scheme makes that provision so that people can hand in true copies of petitions rather than the original. On a matter such as winter gritting—to pick an issue at random—people might well want to present a petition to the town council, the district council and the county council, perhaps to the police and possibly even to the Lord Lieutenant, although I am not sure what he would do with it. I shall speak to Clause 18 stand part. Clause 18(2)(c) relates to whether a petition handed to one authority can be dealt with and passed to another authority. This paragraph seems to allow it, but other clauses, which we will discuss later, appear not to. We need some clarity to avoid confusion.