Clause 135
Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]
1:00 pm
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)
Following on from the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, I suppose the Exchequer Secretary is fortunate that the rules change on 1 July, so she will not have to declare that she is doing two jobs at once. I am not sure what the salary implications are, but I am sure there are some.
I should note that this is an odd Bill, in that it puts together lots of different unrelated elements. I suppose that that is a feature of where we are in this Session—trying to get things done before we finish for the summer. It also shows that the Bill has not focused on issues of local democratic involvement, which we had hoped it might when the White Paper was introduced. Having said that, this is obviously a crucial issue for people in the construction sector. Members of the Committee have received a great deal of information from individual businesses and representative organisations about those concerns. We will not have the opportunity to talk about those as we move through this part of the Bill. However, it seems that there is concern that the proposed changes will not meet the needs of the sector in these difficult economic times. We will need to return to that as we move through the clauses in this part of the Bill.