Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I support my noble friend. I know from my own experience that it is important that you have officer support, but she is absolutely right: one officer might be able to do certain things for you but certainly would not be able to provide support on the sorts of things that I feel are needed on a scrutiny committee. I served on one on a district council, where we had a committee system because we were a small authority. I have also had experience of a large county council, although I was not on one. I understand where the Government are coming from because, frankly, when it was decided to split the executive and the scrutiny, it became clear from all sorts of research that in many areas it did not work terribly well. Many councillors felt that they were disenfranchised and that they could not have a say in what went on. Therefore, it is important—I think that the Government have identified this—that people who sit on scrutiny committees have support so that they can carry out the scrutiny that they are trying to do and so that people can chase up what they want to be scrutinised. I remember one particular time when we were scrutinising what was happening with school transport in Northumberland, which is a big rural authority. The situation was that people had to pay for transport. It was all very complicated and it had become a terrible mess. At the beginning of the term it was a total mess, and trying to get to the bottom of it was very difficult. You could get an officer to a meeting and ask questions, but after that it all went away. I understand where the Government are coming from, but I still think that it is important for local authorities, as my noble friend said, to sort it out for themselves. We have a very good officer on our small scrutiny committee in Berwick, who has done most of the things that the Explanatory Notes say that officers should do. A lot of work has been done by various bodies assisting local councillors to help them with the scrutiny process. I attended a very good scrutiny conference, in which my noble friend Lady Hamwee was also taking part, with her experience of what had happened at the GLA. A lot of good advice is going out to councillors and people have themselves identified that they need to have proper officer support. It does not need to be in this form. If any of the back office—I shall call them that rather than civil servants—has the opportunity to see what goes on with local councillors in those scrutiny conferences, they will see that many people are taking it up without the need to have it in primary legislation.