Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, this amendment would leave out Clause 10, which refers to electronic petitions. I suppose that I should mark the fact that we have moved away from Chapter 1 about democratic involvement and into Chapter 2, which relates to petitions. It will come as no surprise to the Minister to hear that I would much prefer that the entire chapter on petitions did not exist. It is unnecessary. To produce eight full pages and getting on for 3,000 words of primary legislation telling councils how to deal with petitions is a waste of legislative time and, some would say, an insult to local authorities. I would certainly say that it is not the best way to go about it. I am less agitated about Clause 10 than I am about the rest of the chapter. No doubt the Minister will remind me that in Grand Committee I said that this was a well drafted clause and showed how the rest of the clauses on petitions should be done if the Government insisted on legislating on petitions. I stand by that because it is brief, clear and leaves local authorities to work out exactly what they are going to do. Nevertheless, it is not necessary. This is not something that councillors cannot do now. If councils want to set up an e-petition facility on their websites, they can do so. I do not know whether any councils are doing it, but I am absolutely certain that the best approach would have been to work out sensible guidance in co-operation with the Local Government Association and send it round to councils. Whenever Ministers such as the noble Baroness go around the country making speeches, they could include this as something that should be done. Articles could be written in magazines and there could be a general acceptance within the local government world, or what people nowadays, in a rather modern way that I do not really approve of, call the local government community. It that were done, I do not doubt that the great majority of councils would have e-petitions up and running within 12 months. In fact, they would get them ready more quickly than as a result of legislation that made it compulsory. It really is a nonsense to introduce legislation that forces councils to do exactly what the Government want on issues such as this. If the culture in local government was to adopt e-petitions and they were accepted as something that everyone just did, all councils would have them. That is the right approach. One of the reasons why that is a better way is that different councils would set them up in different ways. We would see diversity of provision in e-petition systems around the country. The Government will say that they want everyone to be exactly the same, but the problem is that unless you have diversity of provision, you will never know what best practice is. The best approach is to let people do their own thing and then learn from one another on the basis of best practice. The Government believe that they know how to do things in detail. The nanny state comes along and says, "This is exactly what you have to do and exactly how you have to do it. If you don’t do it our way, you will be breaking the law". That is ludicrous. I therefore have no hesitation at all in moving this amendment to take Clause 10 out of the Bill. That would not prevent councils from setting up e-petitions, and indeed it might even encourage them, but this is the wrong way to go about it. It is a top-down, new Labour, centralised state way and it should not happen. I beg to move.