Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]
Eric Illsley (Barnsley Central, Labour)
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.
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Pensions Reform; Minister for Yorkshire and Humber), Department for Work and Pensions; Doncaster Central, Labour)
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.
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)
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.
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)
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 (Falmouth and Camborne, Liberal Democrat)
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.
David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
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.
Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
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.
David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
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.
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)
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.
Eric Illsley (Barnsley Central, Labour)
Order. We will move away from the primeval swamp and the mastodons and get back to the programme motion.
David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
Humanity moved away from it, Mr. Illsley, and most of us originated in it if we go back far enough—to the dinosaurs that your grandchildren, I am sure, study almost to the exclusion of anything else, as children in primary schools do these days.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said that he can live with the primeval swamp and the programme motion, so, being an obedient Back Bencher, I will bow to his demands. However, I hope we can move on to the interesting bits of the Bill quickly and not faff around with all the frippery that adorns large parts of it.
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)
On a point of order, Mr. Chairman. We Conservatives received yesterday—I assume this applies also to the Liberal Democrats—an absolute mass of paper from the right hon. Member for Wentworth. During consideration of the Bill, the Minister might answer to our questions, “Well, it was in the documents that were sent.” I simply want to put on the record that in dealing with the Bill alongside other commitments we have, it is very difficult to read through these piles of paper in less than 24 hours to find the answers to our questions. I hope the Minister can give a commitment that any further written material will be sent expeditiously.
Eric Illsley (Barnsley Central, Labour)
I am sure the Minister has taken on board that request.
Copies of the memorandums that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee room.