Sustainable Communities Bill

It is interesting that, although we are having a debate that is deeply relevant to new clause 6 —I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for letting us have it—it also relates to the centrepiece of the Bill, because the question that the hon. Lady asked is the main question raised by the Bill. What happens if things go wrong? The responsibility would be with the local authority that had caused things to go wrong and it would answer to its electorate. If she is saying, ““Oh dear. The Government may allow some public money to be given, via tax, to the local authority, which may spend it in ways that fail and it may then be accountable to its population. Oh dear, dear,”” I would say the following to her. First—I do not say this in a partisan spirit—things frequently go wrong for Governments of all hues. I will not trouble her with the many things that have gone wrong in the past 10 years, and I hope that she will not trouble me with the things that went wrong in the years before that. Governments of all hues get things wrong, as do local authorities. Actually, Governments get things wrong on a bigger scale than local authorities, because Governments cover more ground and have more money, so when things go wrong for Governments, they very often go wrong more comprehensively. Secondly, a local authority that goes wrong is pretty directly answerable to its people, in the sense that they can see what it has done locally. Thirdly—and this is the guts of the whole theory and culture of the Bill—until and unless we are willing to say that local people should be able to make their own mistakes, and should be answerable to their local electors when they make those mistakes, we will not ensure that our population is seriously engaged in local democracy and local participation. It is because of the hon. Lady’s fears that Governments of various persuasions have for many years fought shy of giving local people real control. As a result, local democracy has become less and less effective and participatory. The Bill seeks to change that, and that is actually in tune with the Government’s general objectives. That is the effect that the Minister is trying to achieve, as he has frequently said in debates on his other Bills. We are saying that the single most important thing that we can do is to achieve that effect by giving locals real power of the purse, and that is what the provisions seek to do. My last point is that I hope that the Minister will at least make it clear which side of the line he is on. Is he saying that we have misunderstood, and that his new clause 1(3) does the work of the whole of our new clause 6, including subsection (4), in which case we are simply talking about a drafting issue, which we can resolve in another place, or is he saying that our new clause 6(4) is not acceptable to him, because it does more than new clause 1(3)? In that case, we have a point of substance to resolve in another place. It would really be helpful to know which of those situations we will be dealing with in the coming months.