My Lords, I thank the Minister for presenting this and I see some logic in some of the provisions within the regulations. However, paragraph 10.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum raised my eyebrows. It asks:

“What is the approach to monitoring and reviewing this legislation?”

It then states that:

“The Government has no plans actively to monitor this legislation; the majority of provisions are already in operation without problems for combined authorities”.

Tell that to people who have sat on the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s overview and scrutiny committee. They would tell you that things were not working properly. It got to such a point that the dysfunctionality of that combined authority and the poor or lack of oversight of what was happening led to the Tees Valley Review, which was produced by an independent panel and made some quite interesting observations on what was happening there. The report said that:

“The former monitoring officer advised TVCA oversight and Scrutiny Committee they had no remit to scrutinise”

South Tees Development Corporation decisions. That was quite interesting because Tees Valley Combined Authority had given over £200 million-worth of loans to the South Tees Development Corporation and therefore there was a direct link to why overview and scrutiny needed to take place.

In the report, previous members of the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s overview and scrutiny committee

“expressed frustration at the lack of information provided which they felt undermined their ability to scrutinise the activity of STDC and TWL”—

Teesworks Limited—which is now a privately owned company, 90%-owned by the private sector. Two businessmen with a 90% stake are making super profits on the back of £500 million-worth of public sector investment and again, the overview and scrutiny committee has not been able to scrutinise most of that money.

Recommendations 6 and 7 of the Tees Valley Review report relate directly to overview and scrutiny and show why it was not working, what the deficiencies are and how things need to be improved. The Minister pointed out that new guidance is coming forward, but if the Government are not going to monitor actively the legislation, how will they know whether another Tees Valley Combined Authority issue could happen or is happening? What mechanisms do the Government have in place to ensure that this kind of dysfunctionality can never happen at a combined authority again? It is an important question that the Minister needs to answer, especially since this new legislation will not be monitored. If arrangements are not in place centrally to determine whether there is this kind of dysfunctionality, what arrangements will be put in place to ensure that this could not happen again in any of the existing combined authorities or the new combined county authorities?