My Lords, just as the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, suggested, I shall speak to Amendments 55, 57 and 59 in my name. We are back trying to break up the monolith again. In the Bill, the Government seek to centralise the power in the Secretary of State in Westminster and, as my noble friend Lord Bruce set out, that person is Secretary of State for both England and the United Kingdom.
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At the same time, we are relying on a set of individuals who can make judgments and try to report things to the CMA. Meanwhile, we are disintermediating a huge set of government. In other contexts, the Minister has been very fulsome in his praise of the ability of local authorities, local government and, indeed, the devolved authorities to understand their markets and needs of the businesses and enterprises in their area and act in this new, fabulous, flexible way. However, these knowledgeable and expert groups of local government and devolved authorities are not being given any role in potentially policing what may happen when a market breaks down. There is a dissonance in that process.
We have also seen of late a Government who publish a huge paper on the subject of an increasing role for local government and, indeed, unitary local government under mayors. It seems to me to be greatly remiss if mayors in this Government’s brave new world were not given the sort of powers that the Secretary of State seeks to protect for himself or herself. Breaking this down to another level, the amendment is very much to probe what the Government have against local authorities having a role in policing the economies that the Minister has said they are so knowledgeable about, so I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in that regard.