My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken at this stage of the Bill, I remind noble Lords of my various interests and activities. I am a chartered surveyor, a vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils, and a member of the Country Land and Business Association. Probably none of them really clashes with what I am about to say. However, I do have fundamental concerns about these CCAs. How is this extra tier going to be funded or how will it generate its own income, in whole or in part? Will they truly meet what the Minister referred to as the transparency and accountability test that he set in the previous group? Will those standards always be routed in democratic accountability and the norms and conduct to be expected thereby, or something else?
I relate to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about ever-greater centralism in the Bill generally. That is a disturbing trend, especially when this whole levelling-up Bill, if you like, was gazetted as something that was going be better for communities. I see the thing drawing away from everything I understand
community to be, and recognised it as, when I was president of NALC. This seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
The lack of clarity and specificity, presented as a freedom of CCAs to organise and manage their own affairs to some extent, is another area which is not clear from the Bill. The real acid test is whether this will result in citizen confidence in what we are doing. It cannot be otherwise. This is not something we can do from the top down, saying, “Oh well, they’ll like it, won’t they?” This has to be rooted in confidence in communities and among the citizenry generally.
Specifically, on this clause, the associate members are a special area of what I see as potential democratic dilution. Voting or not, these associates will have position and influence in debate and the processes going on. Let us not get too hung up about precisely whether they will be voting, because they will obviously have a lot of important functions notwithstanding. But who might they be? One can think of all sorts of worthy individuals representing important sectors of the community, but what about a property developer? What about a telecoms or construction company executive, who might have a particular interest in being involved in a particular area, or an investor linked to a sovereign wealth fund? The list goes on. What about a pressure group? The real question is: do these pass the test of citizen credibility when looked at from that area, bearing in mind that this is a body that is going to add another tier to the process we have all become familiar with and, to some extent, used to?
Could the noble Earl give us some reassurance as to who these associates might be? There has to be some overarching principle that sits behind their appointment and the functions they are able to deal with. If not, we would be signing some sort of operational blank cheque to these bodies. I hope he will be able to provide me with an answer to that point, which concerns me very much.