Clause 3 - Duty to determine affordable borrowing limit
Local Government Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman is correct. We will support his amendment. Although I am not trying to play a game of whose amendment was best, amendment No. 54, which we have already debated, would have gone even further than amendment No. 27. Amendment No. 55 is intended to give the Government another option to try to reduce the impact of regulation and it refers to the Government's keeping to themselves the power to make regulations. I am keen to speak to the hon. Gentleman's amendment, because it is good and because I think that he is challenging the Minister.
The Minister and his colleagues recently published a paper called ''Freedoms and Flexibilities for Local Government'', in which they set out the new ideas that local authorities will have the regulatory burden removed and that they will not have to write so many strategies or reports for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and other Departments in Whitehall. The Bill goes in exactly the opposite direction, as it is littered with new powers for Ministers to make regulations.
The Minister must think again. If his actions are to be consistent with that recently published paper, he ought to restrict the amount of extra regulatory powers that he takes for himself. He may say in his defence that at the moment the regulations that he has given to the Committee are minimal and he is right about that.
I was pleasantly surprised when I read the regulations to see that they referred to having regard to the code produced by CIPFA and, to that extent, we cannot criticise the Minister. He has kept it as short as he possibly could. However, if he reads subsections (2) and (3), I think that he will readily agree that he is giving himself power—perhaps it is a reserve power,
nevertheless it is a power—to make detailed regulations. I cannot see the need for that.
The purpose of going down the route of a code was that it gives more flexibility. It allows the finance officers of local authorities to engage with CIPFA in an attempt to understand whether they are abiding by the code, because of the many nuances and subtleties in a capital regime. That is the best approach. All those powers need not be kept in the Bill, even on a reserve basis. Although the evidence before us is that the Minister is not intending to use the powers, it is up to us to look to what might lie ahead and to say no, we do not want those types of regulatory burden to be imposed on local authorities.
I shall speak briefly in favour of amendment No. 55, which is a little bait for the Government, if they do not accept the argument put forward by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge on amendment No. 27, which we support. Surely the Minister supports the deletion of subsection (3)(c). That measure is otiose; it goes over the top in what it would allow the Government to do and to set up in regulation. Even if we agree that the Government need a few reserve powers in regulation, which I do not, subsection (3)(c) is completely over the top. If the Minister is not prepared to accept amendment No. 27, I hope that he will at least consider amendment No. 55.