Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

I draw the House's attention to my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests. It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), and, indeed, a series of deeply thoughtful speeches, all of which expressed some concerns about whether the Bill will remedy the disparity between local authorities' responsibilities and their accountability to the electorate, and whether it will accentuate rather than alleviate that division. I begin by considering a narrower issue and by taking it for granted that the Bill's three key objectives—promoting local democracy, encouraging co-operation between local authorities and facilitating regional planning—are a good thing. I want to draw attention to a phenomenon, which, if the measure does not tackle it, could undermine all three objectives. It is the increasing exploitation of a little known loophole, which allows one council to meet its housing targets by building houses in another local authority's area. That threatens the first objective, since local democracy cannot properly operate without local accountability. If one council can meet its Government targets at the expense of the interests of residents in another area, to whom it is not accountable electorally, that is the antithesis of local democracy. The loophole undermines the second objective—promoting co-operation through leaders' boards and economic prosperity boards—because it is hard to envisage how local authorities will co-operate if one or more decide that they can meet their goals by invading their neighbours. That is a recipe for lack of co-operation rather than for facilitating it. The same is true of facilitating regional planning and meeting housing targets, which are regional planning's principal objective, if, once those targets are sub-aggregated to individual regions, houses are not built in areas where local authorities were told that there was a need and a duty to build them, but in someone else's area—possibly even outside the region. Colleagues may not know—I did not until comparatively recently—that it is legally possible for one council to try to meet its housing targets by seeking planning permission to build in another local authority area. They may think that, even if it is legally possible, it does not happen in practice.