Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

That was one of the weakest replies I have heard for a long time. I do not blame the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, but I do not think he tackled the basic issue. The Government are setting out a formal scheme, the petition scheme, which each authority will have, based on this legislation, that will deal with petitions that will become valid petitions and then active petitions. When they become active petitions, the authority will have to do something about them. However, as the Minister said, doing something about them might well be as little as taking a view on them and passing them on to the appropriate partner authority. That would be perfect reasonable. It might be that the authority would look at the petition and reject it. It would have to go to a committee, but that is fine. I do not know whether Ministers and the people who write this legislation have spent much time investigating what district councils do. I speak from my experience in Lancashire and across Lancashire. District councils within Lancashire County Council spend a lot of time discussing things for which they are not primarily responsible and which are not their basic functions. However, they do it because they are the local councils. It is the council that covers the Rossendale Valley, the towns of Pendle, Burnley and its satellite towns, the great rural area of the Ribble Valley or Hyndburn. The same applies in west Lancashire. In trying to get things done, these people do not restrict themselves specifically to the things for which they have functions, although clearly those things have to take priority, because if a council does not carry out its functions properly, it is in trouble. It is absolute nonsense to say that a town such as Burnley—a town with a proud history that used to be a county borough and an area with strong districts—does not interest itself in the environmental, economic or social improvement of the area. The noble Lord knows Burnley quite well from his contacts there, and he knows perfectly well that Burnley Borough Council gets involved in a number of projects—some of which he is involved in—over and beyond its direct legal responsibilities of providing services such as planning, refuse collection, environmental health and so on. Therefore, excluding district councils is not how things are done in the real world. When the noble Lord says that districts cannot influence this kind of thing but that the county can, that is absolute nonsense. There are partnerships. What are partnerships about? What is the Lancashire partnership, which includes district representation, about? What are the local strategic partnerships about? There is one in Pendle, one in Burnley, one in Hyndburn and one in Rossendale. The people involved in them spend their entire time trying to improve the economic, social and environmental conditions. That is what they are set up for. The partnership includes the district, the county, the health service, the FE colleges, local businesses and all sorts of other people. Therefore, saying that districts cannot influence these matters shows a lack of understanding of the real world on the part of whoever has produced the Minister’s reply. The Government keep saying that there is no problem relating to all the petitions that will be restricted and will not be allowed to be valid petitions—and then restricted if they are valid and not allowed to be active petitions—because the council will be able to deal with them anyway or refer them to the appropriate authority. I ask again: what is the purpose of setting up this highly structured, highly detailed system for valid petitions and active petitions if you can just deal with those that are excluded from it in the way that you would have done anyway? The whole thing seems absolutely crazy. The scheme is restrictive because it forces the principal local authority to set up a petition scheme for dealing with valid petitions and active petitions. That is what this legislation does. This part of the Bill means that, if a petition that does not refer to the functions of the authority does not qualify as relating to an improvement in the economic, social and environmental conditions of the area and is not in a top-tier authority in a top-tier area—in other words, if it is in a district—it cannot go into the system. The legislation sets up this great scheme and then says that the petitions that do not qualify cannot go into the system. I think that this issue should be thought through again. With regard to the idea that districts do not take part in local area agreements, I accept and understand that the county council is responsible for co-ordinating the LAA. We all know that. But the idea that districts have no part in it and are not in some areas the lead players in some aspects of it does not belong to the real world. In places such as Lancashire which have strong districts, the LSPs that really matter are at local district level. Some of the other bodies that really matter—the new multi-area agreement and the housing market renewal programme in east Lancashire, which is far and away the biggest bringer-in of funds in the housing area—are at multi-district level. They are not even at a county council level. So this needs thinking about again. Amendment 117 withdrawn. Amendment 118 not moved.