Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, what an interesting and lively debate. Many of the amendments relate to the composition of the boards and the danger of prescription. We have tried in the arrangements that we propose to give regions greater flexibility to devise detailed administrative arrangements which suit their regional circumstances. That came though in our sub-national report and is also the view of the LGA, which agrees that it should be for local authorities in a region to determine these things. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Smith for having just spoken about how it is working in practice. We debated this matter in Committee, where I said that the principle that we were trying to hold on to is non-prescription and explained why the Government have deliberately shied away from covering within the Bill matters that we thought inappropriate for national government to prescribe, such as the detailed composition of the leaders’ board and consultative arrangements. However, in recognition of concern about these points and in response to requests for greater certainty, we also indicated that further details would be covered by guidance and/or regulations, such as a list of statutory consultees to be set out in regulations. However, we are trying to strike the right balance between flexibility and assurance, and meeting different expectations. My noble friend Lord Judd, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, have tabled amendments which would include the national parks as representatives in every region in which there is a park and necessitate consultation with them. We want the leaders’ boards to be small enough to be effective, streamlined, managed and properly representative of local areas, but the noble Lords have made an important case. On Amendment 160, I recognise the importance of my noble friend’s argument regarding the national parks. I have listened to the concerns expressed and we will come back with a proposal to ensure that the Bill enables national parks to be properly represented without undermining the principle of regional self-organisation. On my noble friend’s Amendment 165, on the consultation arrangements, it is clear to me that noble Lords consider it important to spell out in more detail the relationship between the responsible regional authorities and the local authorities boards and individual local authorities. Again, I am willing to take the matter away and consider how we can address noble Lords’ concerns by setting out more clearly in the Bill the reciprocal duties of the responsible regional authorities to consult, engage and take advice from local authorities in the region and the responsibilities of local authorities to engage in that process. I hope that noble Lords will be happy about that. On the amendments laid out by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, I think that we had a similar group of amendments in Committee. Amendments 157 and 164 require the responsible regional authorities to seek advice from the county and unitary councils, the national parks and broads authorities, and so forth. The noble Lord makes a powerful case about the different geographies of this country, in particular the rural as opposed to the urban. This is a restatement of amendments we considered in Committee, particularly in the light of concern expressed by the Local Government Association that the Bill does not replicate the Section 4(4) provision of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and is therefore perceived as weakening the role of strategic authorities held in principle under the previous legislation. I sought to reassure noble Lords and the LGA that counties and national park authorities will have a number of clear statutory roles. I subsequently wrote to the LGA and the ENPAA setting these out. They include different levels of responsibility; a new duty to prepare economic assessments, which will be a key input, as we have just described, into the evidence base of the regional strategies; and a crucial role in establishing and configuring the leaders’ board in their region. Many county leaders will be members of their leaders’ board and therefore have direct management control of the regional strategy and process. They will also have a role as statutory consultees in their own right and be consulted on draft revisions to the regional strategy. We will set out our consultation expectations in regulations and guidance, including a list of consultees. That will additionally be covered in the statement of community involvement. I believe that this package of provisions give counties and national parks much more real, practical influence over the regional strategy than they had over the RSS via the regional assembly, which had a much looser arrangement, and certainly more than they ever had in relation to the regional economic strategy. We have a range of ways in which counties and districts can take advantage of input and participation to get a better level of influence. I think it will be a challenge and although I agree that we have not replicated it in exactly the same way as in the PCPA, there will no loss of opportunity or access to influence. I turn briefly to Amendment 168 in the name of my noble friend Lord Judd and the noble Lord, Lord Chorley. We will shortly be debating the need for an integrated strategy and I know that this amendment will keep the current system of regional spatial strategies by retaining Part 1 of the 2004 Act. I will not rehearse my arguments now but will say that we urgently need a single strategy to bring together the spatial expression of the need not least to provide more housing but also to manage our resources, with the economic strategy which is more closely focused on economic considerations such as jobs, skills, enterprise, business, investment and innovation. That is what a single regional strategy will do for the first time. It is long overdue in some cases. However, if noble Lords will allow me, I will come on to that debate later. I turn to the three amendments in the name of the Liberal Democrat spokesmen. Amendment 160A would allow local authorities to choose to opt out of participation. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, but I did not find it very convincing. We have already made clear the flexibility available to participating authorities in determining how they establish their leaders’ board and who should be a member, and I think that that is right and proper. Given the importance of the strategy and the key role of the leaders’ board, it seems right to require at least a certain level of participation from every local authority in critical parts of that process, and I think that input to establishing a leaders’ board is one of those. Amendment 160B is about participation and representation by all political parties. I think that that was very well answered by my noble friend and I do not have anything to add to that. Finally, Amendment 164A puts a greater onus on the statement of community involvement to demonstrate that the policies within the statement will be effective. I do not think that the amendment has that effect. We had a discussion in Committee about the challenge of making community involvement a genuine and inclusive process. It is very important that we work hard to make that so, and we committed to doing it. Looking at this amendment, it is very difficult to define effectiveness and very difficult to define how it might be assessed. I am sure that the noble Lords would not want a purely presentational amendment; they would want it to work, and there is already an implicit expectation that policies put forward by the responsible regional authorities should be effective. If they are not, they will certainly be challenged in the iterative process of consultation, in the examination in public. I regret that I cannot accept these thoughtful amendments. However, I hope that noble Lords have been persuaded and that my noble friend Lord Judd is happy that we will address the issue that he raised in his amendments.