Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should remind the House of the honorary roles I hold in the Campaign for National Parks and Friends of the Lake District. It would be quite wrong to use Third Reading to reargue the case for the merits; we covered that very fully at earlier stages. I have no doubt whatever about the Government’s extremely positive approach towards the role of the national parks in our society. It is exciting and commendable that the Government take such a strong position. However, my noble friend said on Report: ""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".—[Official Report, 23/3/09; col. 514.]" I understand the Government’s wish not to be too prescriptive and not to undermine autonomy, which they want to see the regions exercising. I am grateful to the Minister for Local Government, John Healey, who has written to me very fully on the issue. On whether national park authorities should be statutory consultees, he wrote on 16 April: ""We fully accept this principle and intend to provide for this in Regulations. Baroness Andrews has already made this clear in the House and in correspondence with the English National Parks Association. She has also advised that we will expect engagement with individual NPAs to feature in statement of policies on community involvement, which responsible regional authorities have to prepare"." It is a very full letter. An awful lot of it is relevant but I cannot possibly quote it all. I will just take one further extract. On the issue of the NPAs being guaranteed one seat on the leaders’ board where a regional strategy is to cover a national park or the Broads, he writes: ""We agree that this principle is important to ensure that the Leaders’ Boards’ membership is representative of the region. It is in fact assumed in the three broad criteria which the Secretary of State would use in approving any scheme for a Leaders Board. … However, in view of concern that this requirement should be made abundantly clear, we now propose to prepare early guidance about Leaders Boards in which we would clarify that the Secretary of State would not approve a scheme for a Leaders Board unless any NPA interests are guaranteed at least one seat on the Board"." I do not want to quibble but I find the words "NPA interests" worthy of reflection and scrutiny. NPA interests could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. The adequacy of representation for the authorities is therefore perhaps not fully met by that point. Of course there must be flexibility. The point of principle is that both local authorities and park authorities have extensive authoritative powers and responsibilities, not least planning, but they do not have the same remit. Therefore, to have one group without the other does not cover the whole range of responsibility and the remits that go with it. My noble friend and the Minister in writing have been so fulsome in their commitment that I could not help remarking to the Minister in my reply that it left me more bewildered than ever that there is nothing in the Bill. It seemed to me that if they felt that strongly, it would be logical to have something in the Bill. We must not let the cynics say, "It is all the more significant that there is not something in the Bill". I am sure that is not the case. I hope this amendment gives my noble friend the opportunity to convince us in her reply that the points are being met in a muscular fashion. Governments come and Governments go, and Ministers come and Ministers go. What we may all intend at this moment may not be present in people’s considerations in the future. I think we should leave the future in no doubt about how strongly we feel on this issue.