Clause 3
Local Democracy, Economic Developmentand Construction Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Pensions Reform; Minister for Yorkshire and Humber), Department for Work and Pensions; Doncaster Central, Labour)
I want to stress that clause 3 is not an attempt to take away from the other bodies any responsibility for promoting what happens or how people can get involved in their organisations. It is an attempt to build upon that and to ensure that the roles available for our constituents are promoted even more widely. I challenge the hon. Lady’s assumption that that would become confusing because, when trying to increase people’s understanding of the possibilities of playing a role in civic life, it is a good idea to have information about all the possibilities in one place. We all know that people get confused and irritated by having to run to many different information points to get an idea of what they might be able to do, so having the information in one place is a good way of helping them to look through what is available and decide what is most relevant. That fits with bringing together into one information hub all the possibilities for people who want either to fulfil a civic duty, or to understand how they can best shape their local services and play a role in their local communities.
The opposite of what the hon. Lady is talking about is in fact the case: we want to broaden the number of people involved. It is true to say that people who get involved in one area of civic life often, as a result, get involved in many others. That is all very laudable, but we want to ensure that different people get involved in areas they feel are relevant to them, because sometimes—we need to be honest about this—a smaller number of people take on many roles. We want to ensure that a whole range of people get involved.