Clause 12
Local Democracy, Economic Developmentand Construction Bill [Lords]
6:00 pm
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Pensions Reform; Minister for Yorkshire and Humber), Department for Work and Pensions; Doncaster Central, Labour)
Amendments 40 and 41 relate to the Government’s public commitment to use the order-making power under clause 14 to exclude planning and licensing applications from the scope of the duty to respond to petitions. I want to make it clear that the list of issues excluded from the duty to respond to petitions should be very limited. We believe that building petitions into council decision-making processes will empower people, so we want to minimise the issues that are excluded and keep the scope of the duty as broad as possible. Obviously, there are some issues that it makes sense to exclude, such as licensing and planning applications, because we do not want to set up parallel routes for considering local people’s concerns in such circumstances. There are already extensive processes for public involvement in planning and licensing applications.
I have a technical reservation about amendments 40 and 41, although they capture the broad aims of our intention. For instance, we want to ensure that, in addition to planning applications, planning enforcement decisions and the decision not to enforce would be excluded. To explain the sort of extra detail that we need to look at, it might be helpful to refer the Committee to Statutory Instrument No. 3261, the Overview and Scrutiny (Reference by Councillors) (Excluded Matters) (England) Order 2008. That order took the same approach for the councillor call for action, as we intend to take for petitions. However, it is quite long—30 lines—and adding such provisions to the Bill would not be the right approach.
Amendment 41 contains one additional exclusion. It provides that issues on which the authority is currently carrying out a formal public consultation should be excluded. That is an interesting idea. The rationale is the same for excluding planning and licensing applications. However, it would be important to reflect further on such matters and particular discussions with local government on how an exclusion might work in practice. The issues need to be thought through in detail, and using secondary legislation allows us to do that. We intend to consult on which issues should be excluded from the duty to respond to petitions after the Bill has received Royal Assent.
As I have said, we want to keep exclusions to a minimum, but it is also important that, in drawing up further legislation, we consult local authorities. I therefore cannot support amendments 40 and 41, and ask that they be withdrawn.