Localism Bill

I should be very grateful if my noble friend could go into a little more detail about Amendment 197E. He has removed there the ability of the Secretary of State to set minimum timescales. I understand what he says about flexibility. But if a local authority wishes to discourage activity under this part of the Bill, then timescales is where it will squeeze most easily. As my noble friend says, community organisations will take time to get themselves organised, to get their bids in and get them up to the standard required for subsequent scrutiny and competition. It is not clear to me in all the liberalising—from the point of view of the local authority—which is going on in these amendments, how the community, or bits of the community, can effectively appeal against, or have some notice taken, of a local authority which is setting very short timescales, which make things impracticable. There is guidance there. If the local authority does not go along with guidance, there does not seem to be any set of teeth that can be sunk into the local authority. My experience of this is mostly in terms of parking regulations. There, again, the Government issue guidance. If the local authority goes against that guidance, no one takes any action of any description at all. Here it seems to be rather more important that in order to encourage action under this part of the Bill, there is an effective policing of the actions of local authorities to make sure that they are opening themselves up to what must be in many cases an inconvenient and, in their view unnecessary, application of neighbourhood rights and interests, with a system which they have got running very nicely, thank you very much. I would very much like some comfort that there will be an effective substitute for the backstop provided by the Secretary of State in the Bill as we have it now, which is being removed by these amendments, in cases where a local authority is acting to make this part of the Bill unworkable. I hope my noble friend can give me some comfort on that.