Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am grateful for that; I could have forecast that answer, but I am interested in the fact that things are being put in these terms. So far as planning is concerned, I do not think I had an assurance that development control functions would not be passed to the EPB. That is the further question I ask—can that just be clarified? The Minister said, on one hand, that councils will not be forced to do anything—that if they transfer their powers it will be their decision—but, on the other hand, that we cannot have a system with different councils in the same EPB transferring different functions, so everything has to be uniform. The two do not tie together. Either everything is uniform or each council has the ability to decide for itself which functions to transfer. When an EPB is set up, everyone may well agree on the system but, as time goes by, councils may wish to change the system and withdraw functions from it. There may be those dreadful old fashioned things called local elections, and a different group of councillors might have a majority on the council, have a different view and want to change things, yet it seems that they will not be able to do that. That leads to my final point, which is on money. It is clear that it will be difficult for a council to leave an EPB—it is locked in—particularly a district council in a two-tier area. It will require the agreement of a majority of the other people. However, if the Minister is saying that the EPB has no power to levy money from councils, what is to prevent a council that has a change of control and gets a party in that wants nothing more to do with the EPB because of the political and public debates that have taken place—because the EPB has suddenly become unpopular in that area, for some reason—saying, "We’re not paying any more money. Sorry—we may be a member of the EPB and unable to pull out of it, but there’s no more brass"? One clearly hopes that people negotiate, come to agreements and reach compromises on such matters, but the real world is not always like that. Sometimes there are major political schisms, even at local level, that result in a breakdown of negotiation as a means of achieving compromise and people simply say, "No more". What happens then?