Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr. Illsley. We now move to part 6 of the Bill entitled “Economic prosperity boards and combined authorities”. If someone was to read clause 85 on its own, rather than together with the other clauses governing conditions under which the proposed economic prosperity boards should be set up, they might conclude that, on paper, those boards look remarkably like the enterprise partnerships proposed in our Green Paper, “Control Shift”.

The conditions set out in clause 85 are essentially inoffensive on their own, and it would be out of order for me to delve too deeply into the other clauses that relate to economic prosperity boards. However, given that we are in the process of exploring those boards for the first time, it is important to say something generally about the centralised restrictions under which they will operate.

I will not go through the clauses in detail as that would be premature, but they make remarkable reading. The Secretary of State can establish the boards, set their voting powers, membership and voting weight, decide who is on them, dissolve or abolish them and revise their boundaries. Their functions are described in clause 88 only in the broadest possible terms, and there is also a question about funds. In short, we are where we have been often with the Bill, not so much with this clause—I concede—but with many other clauses that relate to economic prosperity boards. The great question is why so many of those clauses have to be on the statute book at all.

When we discussed clause 80 and new clause 14, I thought that we had a chance to reach a consensus and let the clause stand. I agree with the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne that it was not perfect to have power flowing down in that way rather than up, but it seemed that a compromise was possible. Sadly, that was not to be.

It is worth considering where the EPBs fit in to all the various schemes that have been proposed. As we go through the Bill clause by clause, we see Labour Members seeking ways to deal with the fact that elected regional authorities did not turn out to be a runner. The only proposal to date that went to the ballot box was defeated. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said that that was not a vote against regional development in general—we will have to wait to read his memoirs to find out what he meant—but it was undoubtedly a defeat for that scheme.

When one considers the various devices proposed by the Government in the Bill, one can only conclude that, on the one hand, it is possible to have elected regional government controlled by elected people—not a policy with which we agree and we have never thought that it would work—or, on the other, we can have the type of bottom-up approach that we very nearly arrived at in new clause 14.

The Bill has a series of halfway houses that are extremely confusing. Alas, the economic prosperity boards are a part of that. We have spent most of the day debating the regional element of the Bill and the leaders’ boards that ultimately will not have power over RDAs. I await elucidation from the Minister, but it is far from clear to me how the boards, which, as I have said, would have the potential to be an enterprise partnership if clause 85 stood alone, are going to work in conjunction with the regional structures that the Government have set up elsewhere.

We have messy mechanisms: the stand-alone economic assessment; the multi-area agreements, which we will discuss later; and the peculiar conjunction of the regional structures that the Minister described. We also have, on the one hand, the leaders’ board and, on the other, the economic prosperity boards, which, one sees if one turns to a later clause, will deal expressly with economic development and regeneration.

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