Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I believe this has been thought up by people who do not understand how councils work. I am sorry to say that but I really do believe it. It undermines representative democracy and the role of councillors as the people who take issues forward on behalf of their resident constituents. The Minister said that people have a right to be heard. I could not agree more. I would not object if the Government came back with a statutory right for people who have an interest in an issue to be heard by the body that makes the decision, the council committee. I have been on councils that have been doing that for many years. People should have the right to be heard at the point of decision making, but a full council is not an appropriate place to have that debate. It may or may not allow the petitioners to speak and put forward their views but, because there are so many people there, the whole process is so formal that, usually and often, it is not the appropriate place to end the process. Many councils already include a right in their standing orders for petitions to be received. If the right contained in this legislation is retained, people may regard this threshold as the point at which that right is triggered and existing rights may be removed. At the moment, that is the first part of the process when a petition comes in. People give notice that they want to present it to the council; they stand up and perhaps say a few words—or not, depending on the standing orders—then hand it in. It then goes through the process of being properly debated by the appropriate people in the council, which is when people have the opportunity to see the decision being taken in a democratic way. Full council as the end process is no good; by that time, decisions will have been made, whips will be on and the decision will be known before the meeting starts. If you take a petition to a council meeting at the start of the process, the whole thing is much more open and it can go to places where people will not have closed minds. The Government have got it the wrong way round. I am not against people presenting petitions to full councils or any other body, but the Government are being too rigid and prescriptive, and are likely to exclude people who can present petitions at the moment. It is clear to me that consideration of these matters has not finished. I will be astonished if further amendments are not put to the Bill before it gets through Parliament, particularly in the House of Commons. I put forward these thoughts in a hopeful and constructive way. We are not trying to block this at all—we are on the same side as the Government in what we want to see—but we are worried about the way it is being done. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 69 withdrawn.