Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

As my noble friend said, Amendment 173B is grouped with Amendment 172AB. He said that he would say what he said, even though he did not know when we would reach it. I am grateful for his compliments, but I fully expect to hear from the Government that my amendment is not as full as it should be if I am to achieve what I am obviously setting out to achieve, because it should have referred to Schedule 12A as well as to Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972. The objective of this not-quite-correct amendment is to require regional development agencies, leaders’ boards, and the two of them acting jointly, which is how responsible regional authorities are defined in Clause 67, to be subject to the same provisions as local authorities on access to information, agendas and meetings. I propose the application of this to regional development agencies outside as well as within the context of the Bill. The provisions of Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972 allow for certain matters to be exempt, which all three entities could take advantage of as local authorities do. However, one should start from the premise that all the business of the three types of entity should be open, subject to exclusions where the legislation provides for that. I feel particularly strongly about this, having gone through experiences in London where the London Development Agency, which is a regional development agency, designed its agendas—this is my interpretation, having looked at how they were constructed—in such a way that all the confidential business happened at the start of the meeting. The meetings took place at 8 am because of the large number of business people who were contributing to the work of the LDA, and the non-confidential business was taken at the end. My guess was that, by that point, a number of main players would have gone on to their day jobs. I am not seeking to rubbish its contribution for a moment, but I do seek to argue that that is not the way to run public authorities. What applies to local authorities should apply to leaders’ boards, which I hope is completely uncontentious. Their business will be of major importance to their areas, and the same goes for responsible regional authorities: the RDAs and the leaders’ boards acting jointly. The situation is a little better in London, but we started in 2000 with a number of members of the London Assembly sitting outside an LDA meeting to make the point that they were not admitted. That is absolutely wrong, but it creates quite a vivid picture, which I would not like to be replicated in the future. I would like all these bodies to be subject to the perfectly proper rules that local councillors have lived with for years.