Local Government Finance Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, although I do not believe it is impossible to find independent people in the sector and of course the Government could have taken the Bill into Public Bill Committee and taken evidence, and then had a long Report stage on the Floor of the House to enable Members to participate. To go back to my point, we are not against providing incentives for local authorities, but we do not believe that this Bill goes about it in the right way. We believe that any system has to be fair and equitable, and must recognise that weaker local economies find it harder to achieve growth and need help to do so. The Government have signally failed to recognise their responsibilities in that regard and we are faced with a ““Leave it to Pickles”” Bill. The Secretary of State is going to decide who gets what on the top-ups, the tariffs and so on. That is all being left to regulations, with no indication given as to the factors that he will take into account. As I keep saying, there are no draft regulations for us to look at.