Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I offer the support of these Benches for the Bill. Into the wash-up period, which perhaps does not exactly show the conduct of Parliament in its best light with regard to the process and scrutiny of legislation, comes this legislation which is an example of best practice. The Bill was introduced in this place by my noble friend Lord Marlesford. It was then rolled out across the country on a pilot basis and was seen to work. My honourable friend Alistair Burt introduced the Bill in another place to extend it on a more rolling basis, and now the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has picked it up in your Lordships’ House, where it enjoys support on all sides because it has been shown to work. There are some very heartening examples that have been focused on at Second Reading and in Committee in the other place. They do not necessarily need to be rehearsed here, but there are some very exciting initiatives. There is a crisis at the heart of our communities. Many of them are changing. Rural communities are losing their post offices, their pubs and their focal points, and there is a sense of distance and alienation from the democratic process. This measure, albeit in a fairly modest way, breathes new life into those structures. It tells people to love where they live. If they want to demonstrate that, they can get engaged and come forward with initiatives, whether in Hackney, where, if they are worried about an overconcentration of betting shops on the high street and want to change the planning laws, they can do that; or whether they want to have a levy on chewing gum in local newsagents to pay for the cost of cleaning it up, they can do that. That is tremendously liberating and invigorating for local communities. It is the complete embodiment of localism, which we are all heading towards because its opposite, big government, has been seen to fail. We certainly enthusiastically welcome that on this side of the House and look forward to hearing many more examples of how the Bill is being used to allow communities to engage with the democratic process and improve the environment where they live.