I am very grateful to the noble Earl for his detailed comments on the amendments. I would like to start with a few comments on the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. She mentioned that devolution deals were often done in smoke-filled rooms. I do not think that would have been the case in Manchester because they seem to have cracked the smoking cessation issue in Manchester, which is good to hear. But it is true that there has been an impression that these deals were cooked up behind closed doors. There has not always been a degree of consultation, which is why we have had such a significant discussion this afternoon around what consultation should take place on the setting up of a CCA, the dissolution of one or any boundary changes. The examples that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, gave on the effectiveness of public consultation and referendums in both Sheffield and
Bristol illustrate that these things can be done very effectively, if adequate information is provided for the public to have a debate and discussion before they vote.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised the opportunity for the Government to issue a statement on consultation, being clear about what the parameters need to be, what the Government’s powers are and what local people can expect to have a say on. That is a vital point.
We also had a lot of discussion under this group of amendments and the previous group on travel-to-work areas. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked whether each CCA is going to have a single economic hub. I do not think that question has been answered yet. We may have multiple hubs in county areas. I will use a local example, as it is the one I know best. In Hertfordshire there are multiple hubs. There are even two very distinct economic clusters: one in the pharmaceutical industry, which is thriving and doing extremely well in things like cell and gene therapy, and one in the creative industries. They are very distinct and different economic hubs within one area. We need to think about how that works in counties where there is not just a simple, single economic hub.
On Amendment 63, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked about how previously on this Bill the Government have been clear more than one public authority may be included in the CCA. Non-constituent members have been talked about a lot. If there is more than one public authority in an area—for example, a local enterprise partnership, the National Health Service or a PCC—it can be very confusing when they do not have coterminous boundaries about who is responsible for delivering within that CCA. It is important that we get further clarification on that as the Bill develops and goes forward.
My noble friend Lady Hayman spoke about standards of consultation and the fact that the consultation should be publicly available. Added to our other discussions on consultation, these are important points. I am grateful to the noble Earl for saying that he would come back to us on that strange subsection in Clause 46 that talks about the Secretary of State having the power to say that they do not think that any further consultation is necessary. That will require further clarification.
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The standard of consultation is important. One example I had was a consultation on the withdrawal of some bus services, to which there were 13,000 responses that said, “We don’t want to lose these bus services”, but the services were withdrawn anyway because there was no funding to take them forward. That is not consultation: if you have no intention of taking something forward or of changing your opinion on what you will do, having 13,000 responses that say the opposite is very frustrating for the people consulted. We have to be careful about consultation in that respect.
I turn to the noble Earl’s direct responses to the amendments. The 60% support issue was putting a figure out there to ask whether there would be a specific requirement of a percentage—a barrier we
would need to cross—before we could accept that that was a clear public response. But the figure is not the important point here: the point is about what proper consultation is.
I am reassured by the noble Earl’s comments, but we must ensure that public consultation is sufficient. If it will fall to the Secretary of State to undertake this consultation, if it is not sufficient, it would be far better if the criteria and parameters for the consultation were set out clearly beforehand, so that we did not end up with public consultations in numerous areas going to the Secretary of State, who would say, “That’s not sufficient”, and we would end up redoing the consultation. I would be much happier if we were very clear about what the criteria of the consultation would be before we set out.
I covered the issue of the single economic hub in previous comments. The fundamental principle that the noble Earl referred to about the duty of co-operation being locally led is right, but I still find the provisions around non-constituent members of CCAs confusing for two-tier areas and for county areas where single economic hubs may be operated across a number of different areas. As we work through the Bill, further clarification on how that duty of co-operation might look would be helpful.
There has been a long-standing issue around the coterminosity of boundaries. I know that they are decided by different government departments for their own reasons, but it is very difficult to make this work. I am fortunate that, in Hertfordshire, our PCC boundary is coterminous with the county, but the health boundaries are not, which has made it consistently difficult to work across those boundaries.
On district councils’ engagement, I fundamentally disagree with the fact that district councils are one of a number of stakeholders in an area. The difference between district councils and even other public bodies is that district councils are made up of groups of people who are democratically elected. So they are not important local stakeholders but democratically elected bodies—the same as a county council. So we are saying that the democratic elections held by unitaries and counties give them more of a say—if that were the case, it is sheerly a case of numbers, because the democratic principle is the same. So we have to be very careful about putting district councils in as stakeholders, whereas counties and unitaries are the decision-makers here; that is the fundamental principle of this.
The noble Earl spoke about a triple lock on consultation—I listened to that and understand that the provisions are there. So, provided we have clarification on the wording in Clause 46, we can consider that there is enough in the Bill to refer to consultation on setting up or dissolving a CCA. But we need to clarify the issues around whether, if a boundary is changed or something is fundamentally changed about the CCA area, we need to have another look at what the consultation on that is.
On the intention of Amendment 126, an awful lot hangs on Clause 43. That is fine, but we need to make sure that the level of public transparency on the consultation that is set out in Clause 43 is adequate
and will meet any test of public accountability. That said, I am very grateful for a good debate and to all noble Lords who participated. I withdraw Amendment 61.