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Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords] |
Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Mick Hillyard,
Committee Clerk † attended
the Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 9 June 2009(Morning)[Mr Eric Illsley in the Chair]Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]10.30
am
The
Chairman: Before we begin, I would like to make a
few preliminary announcements. Members may, if they wish—given
that we are in the midst of a wonderful summer—remove their
jackets during Committee meetings. Members should ensure that all
mobile phones and pagers are turned off or switched to silent mode
during these meetings. I remind the Committee that there is a money
resolution in connection with this Bill, and copies are available in
the room.
I also remind
Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments. To be
eligible for selection at a Tuesday sitting, amendments must be tabled
by the rise of the House on the previous Thursday. For a Thursday
sitting, amendments must be tabled by the previous Monday. As a general
rule, I and my fellow Chairman do not intend to call starred
amendments.
It might help
if I now briefly explain how we will proceed over the next few minutes.
The Committee will first be asked to consider the programme motion,
which is on the amendment paper. The debate on the programme motion is
limited to half an hour. We will then proceed to a motion to report
written evidence, which I hope we can take formally. Again, that motion
is on the amendment paper. If the Committee agrees to the programme
motion, we will then commence clause by clause scrutiny of
the
Bill.
The
Minister for Regional Economic Development and Co-ordination (Ms Rosie
Winterton): I beg to move,
That—
(1)
the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at
10.30 am on Tuesday 9 June)
meet—
(a) at 4.30
pm on Tuesday 9 June;
(b) at 9.30
am and 1.00 pm on Thursday 11 June;
(c) at 10.30
am and 4.30 pm on Tuesday 16 June;
(d) at 9.00
am and 1.00 pm on Thursday 18 June;
(2)
the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 52;
Schedule 1; Clause 53; Schedule 2; Clauses 54 to 61; Schedule 3;
Clauses 62 to 64; Schedule 4; Clauses 65 to 82; Schedule 5; Clauses 83
to 116; Schedule 6; Clauses 117 to 142; Schedule 7; Clauses
143 to 146; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the
Bill;
(3)
the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought
to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 18
June. I
am sure I speak on behalf of all Members when I say how pleased we are
to be sitting under your expert chairmanship, Mr. Illsley. I
believe that the programme motion will give us sufficient time for a
full and thorough consideration of the Bill in Committee. It is a
wide-ranging Bill that includes important reforms to strengthen local
democracy and communities by giving local people new rights to shape
local services, and giving local authorities more power and
responsibility to promote economic development. The Bill also
implements a raft of reforms to support regions and local areas in
taking action at every level to boost jobs and skills and to support
businesses. All these measures were set out in the review of
sub-national economic development and regeneration.
This
Bill was subjected to extensive scrutiny in the other place, and as a
result arrives here in strong shape. We made some important amendments
that clarified our intentions on the duty to promote democracy, reduced
the number of clauses on petitions, removed certain powers of the
Secretary of State relating to regional strategies and local economic
assessments, and emphasised the voluntary nature of sub-regional
arrangements.
I am sure you
recognise, Mr. Illsley, that I am a new Minister to this
portfolio, but I am very pleased that, as one of my first duties, I am
taking this Bill through Committee. Given the Second Reading speeches
that I have read from all parts of the House, I am sure we will have a
lively debate. We are very fortunate to have such a range of experience
and expertise on the Committee.
Mr.
Paul Goodman (Wycombe) (Con): It is a pleasure to see you
in the Chair, Mr. Illsley. I have sat under your
chairmanship twice before, and my memory of the occasions is as dim as
it is pleasant. I am looking forward to seeing much more of you, and
your fellow Chairman, in the period ahead of
us. I
also welcome the Minister. I do so, I confess, in a state of some
bemusement, because since Second Reading only last week, we have lost
the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who
said:
“The
role of a progressive Government should be to pass power to the
people”. She
also said:
“I am
returning...to political activism, to the cut and thrust of
political debate.”
Goodness knows where
she thought she had been for the last few years—including when
she introduced the Bill last Monday. I wish her well; I was an admirer
of her work on extremism.
I also wish
well the right hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), who is now the
Minister for Housing. I have sat opposite him many times on the Finance
Bill Committee. He is a competent Minister and I shall miss
him—I think. What I am about to say will do him no good, but I
feel that he has been somewhat under-promoted. I welcome the right hon.
Member for Doncaster, Central to the Committee. I hope she is not too
disturbed by the Bill that she finds before her, but I know she will do
her best to get it through
Committee. I
also welcome the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North. I am sorry that I
am a bit confused; they come and go so fast and it is hard to keep
track. I also send my best wishes to the hon. Member for Tooting
(Mr. Khan), who was a knowledgeable and expert cohesion
Minister. I wish him well in his new duties. I also welcome the hon.
Members for Falmouth and Camborne and for North Cornwall. The hon.
Lady, at least, is a survivor of previous Finance Bills who has not
fled the
Committee.
Mr.
Goodman: So far. I know from the hon. Lady’s speech
on Second Reading that she followed this Bill closely in the Lords. She
and her colleague, the hon. Member for North Cornwall, will have a lot
say as we go through the Bill. We also welcome the Government Back
Benchers. We know how much they want to be here—how many times
they will be on their feet, endlessly intervening and making speeches.
In the case of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, that
may even be true. He is here at the same time as my right hon. Friend
the Member for Skipton and Ripon, and I am beginning to believe that
they do not exist separately from each other. I look forward to the
right hon. Gentleman’s interventions and to my right hon.
Friend’s speeches, as they exchange their views like great
mastodons bellowing at each other across a primeval swamp.
I also
welcome the rest of my hon. Friends on the Committee, including my hon.
Friend the Member for Ludlow, our Whip, who is almost the most
important person in the Committee. That burden falls on the Government
Whip, whose duty it is, in the chaos engulfing the Government, to apply
a little order to the
Committee. I
have no other comments on the programme motion, other than to say that,
ideally, we would like longer. We always tend to believe in these
Committees that we do not have enough time to scrutinise the Bill, but
we shall let it have plain
sailing.
Julia
Goldsworthy: It is again a pleasure to serve under you,
Mr. Illsley. I think this is the first Bill Committee I have
been on since the Finance Bill. While some of the faces will be
familiar, the issues are very different and I know that some of the
procedures can also be slightly different. I was disappointed that in
considering this Bill, we did not have the opportunity for evidence
sessions, which I was looking forward to taking part
in. I, too, would like
to pay tribute to the right hon. Members for Salford (Hazel Blears) and
for Wentworth (John Healey), and the hon. Member for Tooting
(Mr. Khan). It will be interesting to see how rigorously
this agenda is pursued. We are in Committee now, but the Bill is
clearly the former Secretary of State’s baby, and it will be
interesting to see what commitment is demonstrated by the new Secretary
of State and
Ministers. I
welcome the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central and the hon.
Member for Portsmouth, North. The right hon. Lady is right to say that
the Bill has been scrutinised in the other place, and I find it ironic
that a Bill that is meant to promote public involvement and democratic
accountability should receive its primary scrutiny in a Chamber that
has no democratic accountability. That is a real shame. Members would
have loved to have the time to go through the proposals in similar
detail to the Lords. While the intention behind some of the proposals
is entirely honourable, we Liberal Democrats still believe that such
matters should not be dealt with in primary legislation. At the very
most, this should be a best-practice manual. If we are serious about
empowering people, we have to empower councils, too. That means
providing the freedom for them to be held accountable to the people
they represent, rather than continually looking further up the line to
Whitehall, which seems to be imposing ever greater burdens on them and
dictating what they need to do. Our fear is
that the Bill will achieve the opposite of what the Government say they
want to achieve. That will become clear as we go through the proposals
one by one, and see the ludicrous level of detail set out in primary
legislation.
Mr.
David Curry (Skipton and Ripon) (Con): Mr.
Illsley, it is always a pleasure to serve under you and I am glad to
see that there is a strong Yorkshire element represented on the
Committee.
I am sorry
that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe has announced that he is not
going to stand at the next election. That is regrettable because he has
given us an entertaining introduction, and these Committees can often
be extremely tedious.
The
Government side of the Committee has been amputated and really, one is
terribly, emotionally torn. I can barely put up with the sheer
emotional strain of having expected to see the right hon. Member for
Wentworth (John Healey) sat there. He has been so faithful in ploughing
in the Lords’ vineyard—without the promotion which he of
course deserved. A series of people who were nowhere near as good as
him have been promoted over his head. However, there is the sheer
pleasure of seeing the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central taking
his place. I am tempted to suggest that we adjourn for a month or so,
so that she can read herself into the brief, because there is so much
daftness in it. Being a sensible lady, she will take some time to
separate the wheat from the chaff. There is not a huge amount of wheat,
it has to be said. Adjourning would be a charity to her, because the
No. 2 Minister has also been removed from the Bill. I know that in a
few years’ time, we will see the whole country waving bloody
stumps on the issue of public expenditure, whoever wins the election.
However, I did not expect to see so many bloody necks at the moment, as
demonstrated in this Committee.
It is a great
pleasure to see the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich here.
We do not concert in advance, but that might be a good idea if it
introduced some cross-party common sense into this flaccid
measure.
Mr.
Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab): Will the
right hon. Gentleman express a view about the suggestion of the hon.
Member for Wycombe that the two of us might exchange views like ancient
mastodons bellowing at each other across a primeval swamp? As the hon.
Member for Wycombe is the person directly between us, I wonder whether
he believes that he is the representative of the primeval
swamp.
Mr.
Curry: If we go back 100 or 150 years, in Budget debates
the Chancellor of the Exchequer would speak for four hours, largely in
Latin or Greek. The present Chancellor speaks for four
minutes—it just feels like four hours. It is interesting that
Ministers also commend the scrutiny of the Bill in the House; it is a
sad irony that the democracy of the United Kingdom now depends on the
House of Lords more than the House of Commons, because we are not
permitted to give it the scrutiny it deserves. The Minister says it is
a very important Bill with all sorts of things in it—but that we
do not need to scrutinise it for more than a fortnight. That is a
contradiction in terms.
Mr.
Goodman: I am deeply hurt by the swamp business; if the
right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is correct, the swamp also
includes the Government Whip, who is sitting right in the middle of
it.
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