My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend’s amendment. This is a very welcome Bill and we are delighted that the Minister—together with her boss, the Secretary of State—is so committed to localist values. That is great, and it is very welcome.
However, one of the problems that we found in Committee is that—because of the desirability that the energy in the Bill should come from the bottom up, from localism and from local authorities trying to establish what works best in their patch—it will be very difficult for those of us outside the great authorities to know what will or will not be acceptable to the Secretary of State as future patterns for combined authorities. No general principles of any sort are laid down in the Bill—anything may go, or nothing may go. We do not want to descend into ad hocery, and we do not want to descend into blueprints, but we do need to learn from what the Secretary of State is supportive of in other bids so that those that follow in the wake of those bids can devise a structure of combined authorities that are more likely not to waste our time, waste resources or raise false hopes in our local taxpayers but will command the support and, I hope, the assent of the Secretary of State as the way forward.
If the Minister is not willing to do this—and she has very good reasons not to be willing—and lay down principles by which local authorities may guide their submissions to the Secretary of State, it will be important for the rest of us to learn through example which submissions have been successful with the Secretary of State so that we can model ourselves on the best practice that he has commended. It seems to me that this amendment is entirely in the spirit of what the Minister wants and what the Secretary of State should follow. It is the route forward to combine the best of localism and a bottom-up approach, while avoiding a straitjacket of top-down structures and allowing us to
learn from each other what is going to be best practice in the eyes of the Secretary of State. I hope very much that the Minister can support something that seems very strongly to support the path that she wants to go down and we want her to go down.