Localism Bill

The Minister always sounds terribly reasonable and persuasive, and one could almost fall for his view that the Bill is a Ming vase. In fact, it is really a dodgy, cracked, second-hand urn. He has had to amend it hugely in the other place. I do not wish to detain the House too long on this group of amendments, as we have a lot to discuss, but I want to put on record the fact that we are deeply concerned at having only three and a half hours tonight in which to discuss more than 400 amendments. The Minister referred to the scrutiny that the Bill has already had, and we absolutely accept that several statements had to be made today, but we hoped that the Government would extend the time available for these discussions. Dealing with over 400 amendments in three and a half hours really does not improve parliamentary scrutiny. It was heartening when we constantly heard from the Prime Minister before the election how much he wanted to return to Parliament many of its powers and to improve parliamentary scrutiny—but we have never seen it from this Government. We did not see it with the Health and Social Care Bill and we are not seeing it with the Localism Bill. The Minister would have us believe that this is an historic Bill that returns power to the lowest level. In fact, it is not. It is a Bill about centralising power and devolving the blame. [Interruption.] I knew I would upset the Minister eventually; it was only going to be a matter of time. We welcome some of the Lords amendments, but we have to make it clear that we still think this Bill is shambolic and has not been thought through. The fact that the Government had to make so many amendments in the other place shows how little they thought about it to start with. Let me deal with some of the issues in this group of amendments. We welcome the extension of powers for integrated transport authorities and passenger transport executives and for combined authorities, for which we argued in Committee, as the Minister will remember. It is a bit of pity, I think, that the Government resist such provisions in Committee and then wait to bring in the amendments from the unelected House.