Correspondence
Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017
16.On 24 April of this year, the House considered the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017. In the course of that debate, speaking for the Government, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth referred to comments which the Committee had made about the draft Order. In our view, that reference was not an accurate account of our comments. We wrote to Lord Bourne on 26 April, and received a reply from him the following day. We are publishing that correspondence at Appendix 1. We are disappointed that the reply rests on a selective and incomplete account of comments made in our reports,6 and in so doing replicates the approach followed in the debate on 24 April of this year. We welcome Lord Bourne’s commitment to taking care not to misrepresent our views, and we look forward to seeing this commitment strengthened and made more effective.