Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

Sprinkled throughout this group is a series of clause stand parts, which I tabled with the idea that it would enable us to go through clause by clause to winkle out what they all mean. The noble Baroness will be pleased to learn that I shall not do that and do not want to add a great deal to what my noble friend Lord Tope and the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, said. The purpose of tabling the clause stand parts was to ask the big question: why is Part 7 necessary? That is the fundamental question. My noble friend said we are favour of multi-area agreements in general. I have an exciting document, Pennine Lancashire Multi Area Agreement. Perhaps I should declare an interest as a member of an authority whose leader signed the document in a recent ceremony at No. 10 Downing Street. Clearly, it was thought by the Government to be of some importance. There are lots of interesting things in it referring to government action 1, 2 and so on. It will be interesting to see what all those actions are. I shall not tell the Committee everything that is in the document, but there is some interesting stuff such as reinstating railway lines and services and things like that. Throughout the country, people are taking to multi-area agreements and are working hard to put them together. No doubt, we will have more as time goes on. If they are happening now and people are being summoned to Downing Street to sign them as if they are such a good thing, why do the Government already want to change the system before it has even got going? We have a multi-area agreement in what used to be called east Lancashire and is now called Pennine Lancashire. It will take some time for it to develop and for us to assess whether it is a sensible idea or whether having the MAA and the institutions that will follow, including a new development company, will be worth while, but the Government want to legislate already. This was sold as voluntary. Local authorities did not dream it up; they were told that a new idea had come from above. The Government had talked to people in the local government world, so how about this idea? People thought it seemed like a good idea so they said, "Let’s do it". It was sold as voluntary, but there is now some suspicion that its voluntary nature will not be maintained. In their briefing papers, the Government say that it can be maintained and that new voluntary MAAs can be set up if that is what people want. Two kinds of MAAs—voluntary and statutory—will be set up under Part 7. I understand that there will be multi-area agreements and multi-area agreements with duties. The multi-area agreements with duties will be statutory. In my simple way, I believe that if you agree a document with partners and sign it, you are under a duty to do something about it. It does not require a statutory framework in which the Secretary of State penalises you for not doing something. There is a conceptual problem . Two lots of multi-area agreements—some statutory and some voluntary—is a recipe for confusion. They should at least be called different things. We all know what will happen. The people who want to set up voluntary agreements will be told, "No, there is a new, chrome-plated better one now under Part 7 which can be statutory and that is what we want you to do". If people say that they would rather be voluntary, they will be told, "You can be voluntary, but you won’t get all the resources and money that you would get if you were statutory". We all know that in the real world that is how the Government get their way on all these things. If this is passed as it stands, I do not believe that in five or 10 years’ time there will be any voluntary multi-area agreements. They will all have been turned into chrome-plated multi-area agreements with duties. All the undesirable elements, such as the powers of the Secretary of State to which the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, referred, will effectively be imposed on people. It is the same old thing. They will say, "You can be poor if you want. You can be the paupers of local authorities. We don’t mind, it’s your decision, but if you want the resources to do something useful you must do it the way we want which is the statutory way". I do not think that any of this is necessary. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, that the proposal is not actively damaging in the way in which economic prosperity boards are damaging, in my view, but it is totally unnecessary. It is happening already. I have the proof here. The Government ought to be summoning people in five years’ time from Pennine Lancashire and all the other 20-odd places that have these documents to ask how MAAs are going. If they are not working, the Government can then legislate. They should not be legislating before MAAs have even started.