My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the positive and constructive way in which he responded to this amendment. It gives some hope that the Government might, in addition to letting us know what they are doing, put a bit more oomph behind this process. Before I comment on the Minister’s response, I have one or two comments for other noble Lords—and I thank all noble Lords who took part.
My noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor talked about changing parish boundaries. Since responsibility for local governance review passed to the local authority and no longer requires the heavy-handed involvement of the Boundary Commission—I am not sure when it was—the process has been quite easy. If a local authority wants to review parish boundaries it can do so through the local governance review, which sets out exactly how it should take place. It can do it for the whole authority area or for just one or two parishes—to tackle a particular problem, such as the one my noble friend mentioned. It does not, therefore, need a new process, just for the local authority—in this case presumably Cornwall unitary council—to agree to do it.
The noble Lord, Lord Horam, reminded me of the only time I have been to Orpington. It was an extremely long time ago, and the first time I ever knocked on a door was on behalf of a Liberal candidate: Eric Lubbock, in the by-election of 1962. Before his sad death last year he was, of course, for many years, Lord Avebury. I remember it well. I would not claim to be an expert on Orpington but I would have thought that Orpington and perhaps some other communities there, such as Biggin Hill—where I remember traipsing around on unmade roads—would be an ideal place for a parish council. It ought to happen.
I am a member of an authority and was heavily involved in setting up area committees about 20 years ago. It is important for area committees on a local authority to be given real powers and not just be talking shops. We have had area committees with real
powers. In fact the political job I most enjoyed in my life was chairing the Colne and District area committee for a number of years—again, quite a long time ago.
My noble friend Lord Tope said that we knew what neighbourhoods were but drawing boundaries was always extremely difficult. I think people bring that up as an excuse for not doing it. Drawing boundaries is not difficult if you know what community you want to define, and its core. Then you have to find a way to draw the boundaries with the consent of the people who live on and around them. It is usually quite possible. People know the part of the borough, or whatever, that they live in and, if they do not, a sensible decision has to be made. However, in most cases, drawing boundaries is not difficult.
The important, and more difficult, job is deciding what the core community is to start off with. Sometimes it is the local authority ward. If the local authority ward has been long established—I was about to say “and has been there a long time”, which would be tautologous—because of the activity that has taken place on a ward boundary basis and because that is what the councillors represent, then those boundaries, which initially were pretty arbitrary, take on meaning over the years. That is the case with some of the new authorities that were set up in 1974. In some cases, wards are perfectly reasonable places but, again, it is a question of judgment. In other places where the wards have recently been redrawn, that has resulted in complete nonsense for neighbourhood and community purposes, and things have to be done differently.
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I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, for having called him the wrong name. I am a northerner and all these Londoners sound the same to me, so there we are. He talked about the new duties for local authorities. I would say that the sorts of things set out here are things that the principal authorities—the borough, district or unitary authorities —should already be doing. I do not think that they are terribly onerous, although as a principle I very much take the point that he keeps making.
I am very grateful to the Minister. He said that much of the amendment and much of what I said concerns the local planning authority’s input and attitude. I was very grateful to him for setting out the position statement on behalf of the Government. I think that the Government are very positive on neighbourhood planning. As someone who has spent more time than I would have liked looking at all the stuff about neighbourhood planning on the web, I can say that it is very good. The Government are doing a good job in helping people who want to get to grips with this process. I do not always say that the Government are doing a good job but in this case I think they, and indeed their advisers, are doing a very good job in providing information and support of that nature.
What I am really saying is that more active promotion is needed at local authority level. It is no coincidence that the big urban areas have very few parish or town councils. One or two have them for historic reasons but in most cases the metropolitan districts, London and other big urban councils have very few, and that is
because there is a lack of interest and a lack of will on the part of the members and officers of those councils. That is where change is needed and that is the purpose of the amendment—to persuade the members and officers of these big councils that having parish and, where appropriate, town councils in their areas would assist in the processes of local democracy and in the delivery of local services.
Having said all that, I am very grateful to the Minister for what he said and I look forward to receiving his letters. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.