My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 62 and 77 in this group. First, I very much appreciate the Minister’s explanation of the reason for this group and I particularly welcome the fact that the Government have moved so quickly to amalgamate the previous draft LRO with the Bill. In my view, that is extremely important.
I think the Minister knows that I serve on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. As an individual, I very much welcome that she has been able to respond so quickly. However, I think she will also know that this afternoon the committee met especially to look at the latest set of amendments. Amendments 62 and 77, to which I want to draw attention, were in one set of amendments that we looked at today.
I am obviously in some difficulty; I cannot refer to the precise recommendations of the committee because they will be reported to your Lordships’ House tomorrow, which is really my point. It would be quite wrong for us to move on those amendments without having seen the recommendations of your Lordships’ committee. However, I can refer briefly to the importance of these amendments. Amendment 62 would introduce a new clause which would make substantial amendments to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. It would do so in a way that quite deliberately dilutes the provisions for consultation.
I think all Members of your Lordships’ House who have been following this Bill are well aware that wide consultation, which was a requirement of that previous Act, is central to the acceptance of this Bill in its current form. The dilution of those very important provisions in the 2009 Act seems to me to raise important issues. The Minister has been talking at some length about streamlining and fast-track. I am always a little apprehensive about fast-track streamlining because it usually means a sleight of hand. I fear that in this case that is precisely what is in place. If we are not to have the effective consultation provided for by the previous Act, at the very least we need a full explanation. We
have not yet had that and I do not think we can expect to have it until the Minister has had an opportunity of seeing the report from the committee, which will be published tomorrow.
I understand only too well that in the speed with which the department has had to composite—I think that that is the appropriate word—the LRO from the provisions in the Bill, it may well simply have been a mistake that this consultation process has been, in the words of the Minister, streamlined. That raises very important issues that Members who have been following the consideration of this Bill throughout will wish to look at again in the light of the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Since that will not be available until tomorrow, I hope the Minister will at least agree that there should be, as there can be under the rules of the House, a further debate on these clauses on Wednesday. I certainly would reserve the right to speak. as an individual of course but with the information that will then be available from the committee, when these come before us again on Wednesday. I hope that the Minister will recognise that that is a perfectly appropriate way for the House to proceed.
7.15 pm