Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

The hon. Lady makes a perfectly valid point and reminds me not to go through all the Departments' responses, which would take up a great deal of time. However, it is remarkable that if one types the word "petitions" into the website of, say, the Ministry of Justice, which must receive petitions, all one gets is references on to company windings-up and bankruptcy petition statistics, not a response from the Department itself. Our amendments propose yet again the idea of abolishing the Standards Board. In Committee, we argued that most right hon. and hon. Members will have known of cases involving a complaint about a councillor to the Standards Board where that councillor may not have known the name of the person bringing the charges against them. Such situations are clearly unjust and have an effect on the willingness of new councillors to stand and of old councillors to remain. In her interesting response to the debate in Committee, the Minister conceded a great deal of our case by emphasising that the conduct regime was devolved last year and saying that the board's role has changed to that of a strategic regulator providing local authorities with the tools, training and guidance that they need to reinforce the often robust conduct regime in local authorities. I put it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the House that if phrases such as "strategic regulator" are hurled around into the atmosphere, one must examine them very carefully. It became evident in Committee that the change in the nature of the Standards Board that was brought about last year leaves it with little to do that could not be done elsewhere. After all, if it is guidance that local authorities need, the Local Government Association can provide that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) said at one point in Committee. If financial impropriety is the problem, the local government ombudsman is there to investigate it as district auditor. If there is a case of libel or slander, that is covered by the civil law, and breaches of the criminal law are of course eligible to be investigated and prosecuted by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts. Everyone is casting around for a reason why the Standards Board should be in place, but there really does not seem to be any substantial reason on offer. As we say in our paper "Control Shift", the Standards Board should be abolished. If the Minister does not commit tonight to doing so, that is the commitment that we have made if we are elected to Government. New clause 18 refers to comprehensive area assessments. Again, we had a telling debate about that in Committee, during which two principal fascinating points emerged. The first was that there is no clear evidence yet that the CAA process has resulted in a net gain. Were there such evidence, the Minister or the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich would have produced it. The second was that it is hard to find a comprehensive figure for how much it costs. The Lyons review, using an estimate prepared by the National Audit Office, not a figure that the Department has produced, estimated the cost at £2 billion. Michael Frater, the original head of the Lifting the Burdens Task Force, said that 80 per cent. of the costs were those of reporting to central Government, rather than to the local communities that councils are there to serve. In her response in Committee, the Minister did not claim that the regime was working in the sense of producing any kind of tangible result. For that reason, we have tabled new clause 18. Unless she gives us some very good reason to do the contrary, we intend to press it to the vote if we possibly can, along with our new clause on the Standards Board.