My Lords, I express my gratitude for all the contributions to this increasingly important debate. Judging by the response from the Minister, there are still many areas that I am sure we will want to pursue and explore and to which we will come back at later stages of our proceedings. I echo the comment by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, that there is a clear question here: is there a clear strategy? That is something that we can all question as we go forward.
Many of us in the Room today have been involved with the vexed issue of distributing regional funding, which is extraordinarily complex. I come back to the very clear comments by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, about the nature of the political decision in this. I have enormous concerns about how the whole process will be taken forward if it is allowed to stay in its current form, and real concern about the lack of focus on what it is going to mean in terms of benefit for communities and for people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, emphasised, a lack of clarity, very little in the way of guidance and too many gaps have been the theme that has run through this debate.
I have to pick up one of the comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made concerning tension within the Government. I think that helps to explain where the lack of clarity has come from.
I think we would all welcome improvements. No one is trying to suggest that what we had before was perfect. I myself go back to the time of SRB funding, for example, when local authorities were put by a national directive in the position where communities were split down the middle, with funding going into an area on one side of a street but not the other. We do not want to move away from local determination, and that is very much the spirit in which we are taking this up.
With those comments, and with a clear understanding that we will be coming back to discuss these important matters, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.