Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have added our names to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and we were very pleased to do so. I do not need to repeat all that he has very ably said. Speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, I might just fall into the category of being a little more cynical than the noble Lord, who speaks from the Government Back Benches, about why, as the Government have given such a strong commitment not to approve any scheme that did not recognise the interests of the MPA—indeed in which the MPA was not recognised—they would not make a very clear, specific statement which would be in the Bill for all time, unless there were amending legislation. We would be very grateful to be copied in on the correspondence. I am not cynical about this but I am puzzled why the Government will not take that small, final step. It may well be that the wording of the amendment is not adequate but its intent could not be clearer. The Government, in particular the Minister, have known, understood and I think sympathised with this throughout the process and it is therefore all the more surprising that we do not have a perfectly drafted amendment to put this into the Bill. My noble friend and I have Amendments 52 and 53 in this group, to which I shall speak now. Clause 71 requires the responsible regional authorities to publish a statement of their policies for the involvement of interested persons in the exercise of those functions. The Bill does not define who those persons are; it simply refers in subsection (1) to persons who appear to the responsible regional authorities, ""to have an interest in the exercise of those functions"." Amendment 52 would require those authorities to include local authorities in their region among the persons whom they involve when revising the regional strategy. Local authority involvement would also include the possibility of initiating proposals to make specific provision for a particular area. That would assist the responsible regional authorities to comply with their duty under Clause 73(1)(g) to have regard to the desirability of making different provision for different parts of that region. Amendment 53 relates to Clause 77, which requires each responsible regional authority to produce and publish an implementation plan for its regional strategy. Again the Bill makes no provision for public involvement in that process. Amendment 53, therefore, seeks to add the duty to involve interested persons, including local authorities, and it also applies to the implementation plan. Those are the purposes of the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, quoted the Minister on Report and I shall do the same from, I think, the same column of Hansard. The Minister said, ""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".—[Official Report, 23/3/09; col. 514.]" The Minister very clearly did not say that she would take it away and consider whether to do it, or how to do it in some other way. Her words—and they are on record—were, ""how we can address noble Lords’ concerns by setting out more clearly in the Bill"," those duties. That was a very specific commitment. The Government may not yet be ready to come forward with that, but we have tried very hard to find out how they intend to fulfil that clear commitment, given on Report, and have been unable to do so. That is why we have tabled these amendments again today, in the hope that, in replying to this debate, the Minister will spell out clearly not whether but how this will be done—and not in guidance but in the Bill—in accordance with the commitment given on Report. Finally, the Minister has not yet spoken to her Amendment 54, but as it is identical to the amendment that my noble friend moved on Report, I conclude this otherwise not-too-happy speech by saying how much we welcome the fact that we have persuaded the Government to adopt our amendment.