Localism Bill

My Lords, this amendment deals with another issue of standards, but of a rather different nature. It relates to the position of members of the neighbourhood forums which the Bill establishes and which, of course, will have the responsibility of initiating, potentially, local plans which will be, it is hoped, a significant part of the planning process. Originally, as your Lordships may recall, the Bill proposed that such forums could be constituted by a mere three individuals. That has been expanded sevenfold and now 21 individuals can constitute themselves into a neighbourhood forum and may be involved in the process thereafter that gives rise to a local plan. There is effectively no restriction on those who might constitute this forum, and it may well be that in some cases they would have interests. They might be interests as residents or landowners in the area, or they might be as employees of a concern wanting, for example, to open some facility such as a shop. They might be employees or participants in such a business. As matters currently stand, there would no obligation for any of those interests to be disclosed. I would have thought that in the interests of transparency, they ought to be. This would not be a complicated process. Those who apply to be designated as a neighbourhood forum would, in making the application, simply indicate their relevant interests in exactly the same way as councillors, certainly when elected, have to declare their interests. The Bill has dealt very fully with that, so it is not an inordinately complicated process. The amendment provides a safeguard to avoid a situation where, effectively, a community might find itself being manipulated by particular interests without being aware of what those interests were. I hope that the noble Baroness will look again at this matter. This is the last opportunity, of course, in this place for that to be done. I cannot really see any strong argument against extending that degree of transparency in as sensitive an area as planning to these new forums, in the same way as would apply to members serving on a planning committee of the local authority, or indeed the parish council—given the scale, it is more like a parish council, obviously. Equally, those interests should be declared. I believe it would be consistent with the general approach that the Bill adopts in these matters for that to be the case. I beg to move.