Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, Amendments 47, 48 and 83 relate to the Government’s public commitment to use the order-making power in Clause 19 to exclude planning and licensing applications from the scope of the duty to respond to petitions. I begin by making it clear that the list of issues which are excluded from the duty to respond to petitions should be very limited. We know that building petitions into council decision-making processes will empower people. We therefore want to minimise the issues which are excluded from the duty to respond to petitions, to keep the scope of the duty as broad as possible. There are some issues which it makes sense to exclude, such as licensing and planning applications. We intend to do this because we want to avoid setting up parallel routes for considering local people’s concerns. There are already extensive processes for public involvement in planning and licensing applications, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said, so we do not think that petitions on these subjects need to go through this separate system. I have a technical reservation about Amendments 47 and 48. Although these amendments capture the broad aims of our intention, the drafting would need to be longer and more complex than they suggest. For instance, we want to ensure that, in addition to planning applications, planning enforcement and the decision not to enforce would be excluded. I refer noble Lords who would like to see what this extra detail would look like to SI 3261, the Overview and Scrutiny (Reference by Councillors) (Excluded Matters) (England) Order 2008. This order took the same approach for the Councillor Call for Action as we intend to take for petitions. It excludes planning and licensing matters from the scope of the Councillor Call for Action power and is over 30 lines long. Adding these provisions to the Bill would therefore make this chapter substantially longer. Amendment 48 contains one additional exclusion: it provides that issues on which the authority is currently carrying out a formal public consultation should be excluded. This is an interesting idea and the rationale is the same as for excluding planning and licensing applications, namely that we do not want to duplicate public engagement processes which already exist. However, I think that further reflection is needed with local government on how such an exclusion might work in practice. For instance, I know that many community groups form petitions precisely to respond to consultations. I wonder if an electronic petition signed by 500 people differs in any real way from 500 separate e-mails sent responding to a consultation, with identical text provided on the website of a community group. So I think that we should reflect further on this idea and seek views from the sector. I have a similar worry about Amendment 83, which provides a narrow order-making power so that planning and licensing matters may be excluded from the scope of the topics which trigger a response. It is worth noting here that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not find the order-making powers in the Bill inappropriate. It is our intention to use the order-making power to exclude these issues, and I believe that issues should be excluded only if there is a genuine reason to do so, so that we do not dilute the benefits of these proposals. However, my concern with such a narrow order-making power is that it would not enable us to respond to any new ideas, such as the one that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has put forward, which might be suggested by local authorities themselves in response to consultation. These issues need to be thought through in detail, and using secondary legislation will allow us to do that. The Government intend to consult on which issues should be excluded from the duty to respond to petitions after the Bill receives Royal Assent. We intend to keep exclusions to a minimum, but it is important that the exclusions should be able to respond to the suggestions of local authorities themselves. I therefore ask that Amendments 47, 48 and 83 not be pressed so that we can reflect on these issues in more detail, in collaboration with the sector, and put forward exclusions in secondary legislation which achieve our joint aims.