Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am very grateful for that comment. I cannot believe that the Hansard of this Grand Committee will not become a bestseller and be read by everyone in the land. I read most of Monday’s proceedings in bed last night. It was a great help in getting to sleep, so I am afraid that I missed the last two pages. When I woke in the morning, I thought, ““What’s this in the bed?””. On the previous group, I was remiss in not thanking the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, who has temporarily left his place. I apologise to him for not having noticed that he was sitting behind me. He is a far greater expert than I am on the City of London. One of my noble friends has reminded me that one of his predecessors as a Member of Parliament for Westminster was John Stuart Mill, who I think in a recent poll of Liberal Democrats was voted as the greatest ever Liberal, so the noble Lord follows in a fine tradition. I have also been remiss in not adding my commiserations to the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for not being able to be here today. We have been impressed by her interest and performance as the Conservative spokesman in this Grand Committee on the first Bill for which she has been responsible. I hope that someone can pass that on to her. We look forward very much to her being back next time—not that we do not want to see the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, as well. In looking at this legislation, I have three principles regarding what we should try to persuade the Government to change. The first is to question whether the legislation is a good thing. We sometimes win on that but usually we do not because we are told that the House of Commons makes these decisions and it is not for us to say whether as a whole it is a good thing. Secondly, and importantly, is the practical question of whether it will work or whether it will cause problems. I hope that the Government will agree that much of our probing on this business of petitions is done on that practical basis. We do not want a scheme that will not work but will cause problems and make matters worse. Finally, even if we cannot get any changes at all to the meaning of the legislation, lawyers such as my noble friend Lady Hamwee and pedants like me think that it is important to at least establish what the words mean. Therefore, I am grateful that the Minister has agreed to look again at the ambiguity. There is a difficulty with what the Minister said about local authorities being able to exclude certain things from the scheme because it would not work locally. He said that local authorities can take sensible decisions to exclude some issues. However, under this legislation, they cannot do that. Clause 14(4) says that the Secretary of State, not the local authority, will make that decision. Local authorities will be able to act only under decisions made by the Secretary of State. If the clause simply said that local authorities could exclude things that it was sensible to exclude in their area for good reasons—in other words, if it left it up to them and trusted them to do it—we would be very happy. We are willing to meet the Ministers on all these matters at any time before Report to see whether we can improve the legislation. We clearly have a difference of view on the quality of the legislation as it stands, but if we can improve it we will be a little less unhappy than we would otherwise have been. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 91A withdrawn.