Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I have two amendments in the group—Amendments 190B and 192B—and I shall speak to one or two others as well. Following my noble friend’s comments about lasting the course depending on how long we go on, I may have to leave depending on the progress in the Chamber. I nearly said council chamber; it would certainly make a rather fine one. Amendment 190B follows what underlies Conservative Amendment 190, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, which would restrict the functions of an economic prosperity board to economic development and regeneration. My problem with her amendment is not that it is too restrictive but that it is not restrictive enough. Regeneration can cover a multitude of things. It can certainly cover new schools, which are vital for the regeneration of communities, and housing, which is often at the heart of regeneration schemes, as well as various other things. My amendment, along with that of the noble Baroness, is intended to probe the kind of functions that the Government think that the EPBs ought to have. I suggest specifically, for the purposes of probing, that they should not be functions relating to a council’s status as a local housing authority or a planning authority, whether we are talking about making plans, development control or anything else, and that the planning power should not be transferred to an EPB. It is particularly important that anything that an EPB does should be subject to the normal planning system otherwise there will be a risk of it falling into disrepute. People will say, "These boards just get on with their schemes. They give themselves planning permission and do not listen to anybody, and the normal checks and balances in the planning system are not there". Will the EPB have a role as an education authority providing new schools, perhaps? What about its functions relating to the promotion of tourism, which is a crucial part of regeneration in large parts of the country? What about environmental health functions or licensing functions—those ought to remain firmly with the licensing authorities, with their quasi-judicial functions—and, indeed, anything else that the local authority does not want to transfer? The local authority should be able to place conditions or limitations, including time limits, on the transfer of powers to the EPB. Unless it is very clear what the EPB can do and that local authorities can constrain it, we will be setting up a new quasi-local authority. If, as the Government might say, it is meant to be another way of local authorities working in partnership with perhaps a stronger base which gives more certainty and would be less easy to dismantle, nevertheless local authorities must continue to have the power to restrict the use of what are their own functions. If not, as I said, we will just be setting up another quasi-local authority. Amendment 192B refers to funding and states: ""Provision under this section may not require or permit an EPB to levy a precept on the council tax"." It is clear that the funding of EPBs will come mainly from the constituent local authorities. Setting up new departments to do things that some of the constituent local authorities had previously done, running them and administering them will need buildings, offices, telephones and all the rest of it and that will have to be paid for by the local authorities. Who decides how much each local authority contributes towards the EPB? The hope is that it will be done by agreement: the EPB will say that something is reasonable, there will be negotiations with the constituent local authorities about what is reasonable and a compromise acceptable to all will be reached. The normal way in which organisations of this type fund themselves is by a process of negotiation and agreement with the constituent authorities. However, if the EPB has the ability to levy—whether it is technically a levy on the precept on the council tax or simply an imposition on each constituent authority on whatever basis—it takes levying council tax one step away from democratic accountability, because a council will have to pay the money whether it likes it or not. At the moment, each precepting authority can precept on the council tax, but each local authority is more or less master of what it spends, raises and precepts. This amendment is designed to probe this important matter so that we can hear what the Government have to say. I shall be interested in the Minister’s answer.