Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

This is the first of a series of debates on this issue. I hope that we can persuade the Government to revisit this area, otherwise we will have complicated further processes in the passage of the Bill through Report stage and Third Reading. Clearly there is a lot of unhappiness with the Bill. When local authorities are consulted on whether they want a new duty the only reason they say yes is that they think they might get a bit more money. They do not say yes because they will be getting guidance from the Secretary of State. If we have a duty, we usually get money. That is why they said yes last year, rather than saying yes to a lot of involvement by the Secretary of State. Local authorities already do it and they thought that if they had a duty to do so they would get a few more millions to help them with regeneration and so on. That is why they said yes. They wanted a bit more money for regeneration and help with their economies. If the Government said that, they would have no problems with their proposals. We will have a series of discussions round this issue this afternoon. I beg leave to withdraw the amendments. Amendment 160D withdrawn. Amendments 160E to 161A not moved.