Localism Bill

My Lords, I face in a slightly different direction from my noble friend Lord Greaves. I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench can give me some comfort that, when the regulations are set out for this, they will have in mind how desirable it is that we should encourage the creation of neighbourhood-based community organisations to take on services currently provided by the state. One of the difficulties that we face in cities is that people have become used to the comfort of state provision, although they are getting extremely grumpy in some cases with the way in which it is provided. If a community in a city is to get together and go through the process of preparing to bid for a service which it values, it is going to need considerable comfort and assistance in the regulations to make sure that it is not going to get tripped up on technicalities and that the local council can offer advice rather than having to stand back and treat this strange creature as a competitor to any commercial interests which may come along to bid for it afterwards. We need to be equipping ourselves in this Bill to nurture local enterprises and communities in cities to give them a chance through the provision of services to generate a surplus for reinvestment in the community. That is what we are doing elsewhere in this Bill for rural communities, which will generate a comfortable surplus out of planning permission, but we are doing nothing for inner city communities. This is the bit of the Bill where we give relatively compact communities easy access to a diversity of resources. Cities exist because they have that advantage over rural communities. We need to give the local elements of those communities a real chance to get involved in providing local services and in that way generate surpluses which they can reinvest in the community and do the things that they want to do. I should like my noble friend to give me comfort that that the department has urban communities in particular in mind in this part of the Bill. I have received much more helpful responses on this subject from my noble friend at the Department of Health. Those responses suggest that, once we get the health Bill through—as I am sure we will—we will find local GP commissioning groups who are ready, willing and able to commission services from local community groups. Looking after the elderly, for instance, or making sure that people get looked after in other ways which the massive mechanisms of the National Health Service find difficult and inconvenient but which the community of patients through their doctors none the less wish should be done, will be accommodated readily and with ease and enthusiasm. We may well find communities becoming much more active in supporting their needier members through their beneficence and redirection of funds from the National Health Service. As I said, I have found those discussions very constructive. I very much hope that the same thinking is going on in my noble friend’s department.