Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for trying to clarify these clauses. I am afraid that he will get a disappointing reply but I shall explain as briefly as I can why the language of the clause is as it is. Amendments 113, 114 and 106 address the issue of sending an electronic acknowledgement to both paper and electronic petitions. I want to be absolutely clear that the Government’s intention is that written acknowledgement under Clause 13(1)(a) should include electronic communication wherever that is appropriate—for example, when there is an e-mail. I take the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, on the amendment but I do not have an immediate answer. I shall read Hansard tomorrow in the context of what he said in the previous debate. Amendment 113 seeks to remove the provision that electronic petitions do not need to be acknowledged. This means that they would have to be acknowledged and that, of course, would be an extra and unnecessary requirement. Petitioners will know whether their petition has been received because it will either be rejected or placed on the facility. That is why we do not include a requirement to acknowledge an e-petition. A further problem is that at the point it is placed on the facility, the local authority will not know how many signatures it will attract and how strongly the community feels about the issue, and, therefore, it will be unable to say what it proposes to do. On Amendments 109 and 110, I understand the noble Lord’s frustration with the legislation in front of him. We often face this problem when we are considering legislation. I have not served on a Bill where we have not had to wrestle with the internal logic of language, which is as it is because it has to convey precise legal meaning. That is the problem with parliamentary draftsmanship. In many respects, this Bill is clearly written, but sometimes one has to pin the corners down. Amendments 109 and 110 together seek to replace the requirements to provide information which the authority considers relevant about how a petition will be treated with a more detailed description of what information must be given. Amendments 104, 112 and 124 are consequential. Many of the suggestions the noble Lord has put forward in regard to the kind of information that he thinks the authorities should provide and the way that they should do so seem sensible. However, I would argue that Clause 14(9) is as it is for a reason. It already makes provision for the acknowledgement to include confirmation that the authority will give effect to the request in the petition. The language of the Bill is rightly somewhat more legalistic—necessarily so—but it leads to the same result. If the council decides that it is prepared to accede to the request contained in a petition, it can do just that and send a single letter confirming the fact. The need for the language in the Bill, which may seem complicated, is that we have to cater for a situation where an authority does not immediately concede that what is called for in a petition should be granted; that may be done only after one or more other steps are taken. For example, more information may need to be collected or more views sought before the authority will agree to go along with the request. In that case, we have to cater for a two-stage process—acknowledgement of the petition followed by giving effect. In such a case we need to cater for how the petition organiser should be notified of the outcome and how the outcome should be published. That is catered for in Clause 14(7). One further small difference between the provision in Clause 13(1)(a) and Amendment 109 relates to the requirement for an authority to specify in its scheme when a petitioner can expect to receive the acknowledgement. The amendment would remove that requirement. It is not a heavy burden for an authority to have to give some indication of when it will aim to let people know that it has received and is considering, or has decided to comply with, a request in a petition. It would be regrettable if that element were removed. I appreciate the noble Lord’s hard work in trying to untangle what he sees as an over-complex, legalistic provision, but it is like that because it is legally necessary to be like that in order to do what we want it to do.