Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for bringing the Bill to us in this House. I echo his opening comments—the original Sustainable Communities Act indeed had a wide measure of support. At this early stage I should declare an interest once again as an executive member in the London Borough of Sutton, because that is one of the 100 or so councils that have submitted proposals under the original Act. We certainly join enthusiastically in the support for that Act. We all recognised that it was important that that was not seen as a one-off proposal, something that simply happened—or not—and then faded away. It is clearly important that the process is ongoing and has widespread support, not only from all sides of this House and the other place but, perhaps even more importantly, from the community at large. Those local authorities that have embraced the original Act will build upon that work. We now have Total Place, which has recently been introduced to us. That has certainly produced interesting information but, as with all interesting information, its real purpose is to be of some use, not simply to be interesting. We therefore need to see how much local authorities and their partners and others in the community can build on the evidence and the work that is in Total Place to take these measures forward. From these Benches, I give keen support to what I think the noble Lord described as the limited additional measures in the Bill—limited but very necessary. I look forward to hearing what further comments the Minister may be able to give us when he responds here. I have one particular question. I know that the Bill extends the powers to parish councils. By definition, that includes town councils, which are regarded as parish councils for legislative purposes. I cannot resist the temptation once again to express my personal regret that Greater London is the one part of the country that is not allowed by law to have parish councils. I simply put that in because I never lose an opportunity to mention it, ever since I introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the other place back in 1973 to try to deal with that. Unfortunately, the Government were so alarmed by the proposal that they called the February 1974 general election and my Bill was lost, along with my seat at the time. New Section 5C(1) says: ""The Secretary of State may by order specify persons or classes of persons, in addition to local authorities"." I seek clarification on what is in mind for, ""persons or classes of persons"," perhaps in addition to community groups or parish councils. Is it intended, for instance, to include local strategic partnerships? It is a wide and loose expression to find in a Bill, and I would welcome some clarification of what is in mind for that. With that single question, I give an unqualified welcome to the Bill and am pleased to support it.