Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments. We recognise that the Government have gone some way with their amendment and we are grateful for that. That is encouraging and it is the second time today that they have removed some of the powers of the Secretary of State along the lines that we wanted. I hope that there might be further movement as we go through the legislation. We argued throughout the Committee that that should be so. I am still a little unclear about what elements of the existing strategies we are talking about. I gathered from the Minister that the Secretary of State would not look at RDAs’ individual strategies where they do not affect national policy and that they would be able to decide what they took forward. I give noble Lords an example. Since this legislation was written and thought about, there have been dramatic events and changes in the way in which development is taking place. Only this morning, I was looking at a large development in north Essex that has collapsed because the developers cannot afford the Section 106 agreements that they entered into because of the collapse in the price of the land. They want local authorities to put in some of the infrastructure that would have come out of the Section 106 agreements. Therefore, whatever strategy the Secretary of State or the RDA has, a lot of local decisions will have to be made. We are talking about 15 years for a development that was going to take place in the next three. The planning strategies in this legislation will be very much dependent on the economic situation in the next few years. Some of them are almost irrelevant for the moment; they might be more relevant in five years. It is very difficult to see how we are going to build some of the houses that are planned for. Therefore, whatever the Secretary of State says, a lot of local decisions will have to be made. I would like to see more of that in the legislation; I shall come back to that in a moment. However, I am grateful to the Minister. She has moved in our direction and clarified that the Secretary of State will not be as involved as we first feared. None the less, I would like to know a little more about how she sees the RDAs developing the regional strategy from day one under their own auspices.