Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

In this bumper bundle group I shall speak to Amendments 168E to 168G, 170A to 170E, 172AA, Clause 68 stand part and Amendment 180A in Clause 72. Further amendments have been tabled by my noble friend Lady Hamwee and from the Conservative Benches. This group is about leaders’ boards, which is the new invention that we have to understand and perhaps love in Clause 66. They had not been dreamt up at the time of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, but are nevertheless now thought to be essential to maintain the system and prevent it collapsing. As I understand it, leaders’ boards are a response to complaints about the democratic deficit that was threatened with the abolition of regional assemblies and the power to produce regional plans going to the regional development agencies. That would have allowed the RDAs to carry out their own investment proposals. At least we now have some balancing element in the form of the leaders’ boards. However, for a lot of people in the regions and their local authorities, it will be seen to entrench a remote, regional elite that has little connection with them, and hence some of my amendments. We now have a leaders’ board in the north-west, which goes under the exciting name of 4NW. No doubt the person who dreamt this up had spent too much time texting and came up with this rather dismal name. Nevertheless, there it is. It is chaired, no doubt admirably, by the person they describe as ““Lord Peter Smith””: the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh. We are perhaps ahead of the game in the north-west. We have this thing, although we do not yet have much experience of how it may work. The amendment would remove ““must”” and insert ““may”” in setting up leaders’ boards. It would provide that leaders’ boards may be set up if local authorities in the region want them, but if they do not want them, they do not have to set them up. The Government say that they are forced to have leaders’ boards whether they like it or not. Amendment 168D questions whether a leaders’ board should ever be an incorporated body. I understand that it is intended—this is certainly mainly the case in the north-west, although there is some non-local authority representation on them—that a leaders’ board is a representative body of local authorities. As such, it is not clear to me why it should ever be a corporate body. It might be dangerous if it was. It is a step towards a new regional assembly-type body, but of a small and elite kind. The question is in what circumstances a leaders’ board might need to be incorporated. What might it need to do, given the other bodies in the region such as the regional development agency, the Government office and many more? Amendments 168E, 168G, 170A, 170B and 170D would remove ““participating””—perhaps I should have done it in other places, too—and insert ““qualifying””. This is because most local authorities in big regions will never participate in this body; they qualify to participate. They are rather like people who are qualified to stand for local authorities. They do not participate in those local authorities unless they get elected. The Bill suggests that all local authorities are participating when they are instead only qualifying to be on the body, should they be chosen by whatever system there might be. Approximately two-thirds of local authorities in the north-west are not members of 4NW, and most of them are not likely to be. Amendment 168F would define the membership. The Bill talks about leaders’ boards, and there is an assumption that it consists of leaders of local authorities, but it never says so. It does not say whether people who are not leaders can represent a local authority on a leaders’ board rather than the leader. If these bodies are going to exist, the membership should be clearly defined. Amendment 170C probes the leaders’ boards’ funding. Clause 66(7) says: "““The Secretary of State may give such sums as the Secretary of State considers appropriate””." Well, the Secretary of State may be generous in wanting to give out lots of cash to these bodies, but apart from that it is not clear how these bodies will raise whatever money they need. This is a probing amendment to ask what scale of budget the Government anticipate these bodies will have. Amendment 170E probes whether the bodies will be able to put a levy on their participating or qualifying local authorities. Will they be able to impose a precept? I presume not, as that would require other legislation. However, will they be able to impose a compulsory levy on the councils in their region, or will councils be able to wash their hands and say, ““We have no influence here, they’re going to do what they want, so we won’t have anything to do with it and we’ll save our money””? Those are important questions about the financing of leaders’ boards. I have no idea how the leaders’ board in the north-west is being funded. Presumably it is being paid for out of funds that were available for the regional assembly, by donations from the government office or by—