Clause 5

Part of Sustainable Communities Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:00 pm on 23 May 2007.

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Photo of Oliver Letwin Oliver Letwin Shadow Minister without Portfolio 2:00, 23 May 2007

That is an extremely helpful clarification. If the Minister’s intention is as he has now described, it may well be that we can reach a perfect agreement. To take a concrete example, if a regional development agency runs a business links programme, properly ordained by a sequence of top-down rules, and the local authority seeks to use the cash available for something that it thinks a better way of promoting business in the locality, and if the Secretary of State has not ruled that the business links are of primarily national significance, our intention is that the local authority could so direct the money. If the Minister’s intention is the same, we have agreement.