I thank everyone. Given the nature of the earlier discussion, particularly about the cultural venues, perhaps I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA at this point, with apologies for not doing so earlier. I wonder if noble Lords are all sitting feeling relieved that they are not standing here trying to pull all this together. On behalf of the Committee, I thank everyone who has contributed; it has been a very helpful debate. I also thank the Minister for his fulsome response.
However, the nature of the amendments we are considering in this group and their probing nature is such that noble Lords have been seeking reassurance. Although the Minister has attempted to give us reassurance, without looking through the detailed responses that the Committee has given this afternoon I am not convinced that on the matters raised we can all put our hands up and say that that reassurance has been received on all points. I hope there will be opportunities to come back and look at the continuing areas of concern.
I am also struck by the fact that we have not had the opportunity to discuss in detail the evidence submitted by experts during the House of Commons proceedings, including the very serious arguments by Professor Fothergill and Dr Pazos-Vidal about the benefit of defining areas. I confess that I am at a loss as to how the Government can bring this down to the point where the interested parties can make sense of the opportunities available to them, and how we can move this forward in a simple way that would enable areas and businesses to benefit, without the excess bureaucracy that the Minister assured us would not get in the way. I remain to be convinced on some of these points.
5.45 pm
The other area that we have focused on is how to bring benefit to places—but again, through the social value debate, are we concentrating enough on the benefit to people who live in those communities? I confess a personal interest in the disclosure of the Minister’s role in the north-east devolution assembly debate. Having been on the other side of the fence in the Yorkshire debate at the time, I can probably tell him exactly when that was. I knew that a certain Dominic Cummings cut his political teeth there: I think that the physical white elephant that the Minister mentioned was dreamed up by him.
So many points have been raised today that I cannot possibly do them all justice, but I want to dwell on my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s pertinent amendment on value for money. In the current climate of looking at how money has been spent over the past couple of years, every single pound of public money is critical. I welcome the comments from all noble Lords. We will take the Minister’s comments away and look at them in more detail, then regroup and consider how to address the real concerns that we still have about so many of the points discussed this afternoon. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.