Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I add my support to what has been said. Having been on a district council getting money from an RDA, I know that it would have been much better if we had had control of what we wanted to do. That is not to say that we were not grateful for much of the money coming into the borough from the RDA in Berwick-upon-Tweed, because otherwise we would probably not have had that money. But the decisions about what would happen in the borough were in many senses imposed from above. In many cases, there was no money to spend on the borough except if it came from the RDA; therefore, it was in our interests to go along with whatever they were doing. Much of it has been quite successful—do not get me wrong; it has not been a total disaster, but it is not very democratically accountable. That is why this is quite important. The Government have said that they want to have new localism and people in control of what is going on locally. As the system works at the moment, it does not necessarily lead to terrible decisions or awful things happening but the democratic accountability is totally lacking. That is why I am happy to support the amendment.