Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 160E, 164B, 164D, 164F and 164J. First, however, I must declare my interest as leader of Essex County Council and past vice-chairman of the LGA. We do not want to rerun the arguments that we put forward in Committee. These amendments are intended to get from the Government further information on how the leaders’ boards will work and what role the Secretary of State will play in scrutinising or, indeed, controlling them. Clause 68(8) gives the Secretary of State the power to disband a leaders' board if it is not thought to be working. In paragraph 16 of its report on RDAs and this legislation, the House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee concluded that it was, "““concerned about a lack of clarity about how LALBs will operate. We believe that the effectiveness of some LALBs might be limited due to the size and diversity of their membership or the number of two tier authorities within the region””." On these Benches, we share both these concerns. There is huge uncertainty about how the leaders' boards will work, about whether they can work and the lack of clear guidance on their role. It would be incredibly naive of us to leave it entirely up to any Secretary of State to decide how they will operate. We need more clarity about this now. What criteria will the Secretary of State use to assess whether they are working? If the Secretary of State takes a dislike to them because they are of the wrong political party, could he or she disband them? That brings me to the second amendment in this group. If the leaders’ board is disbanded, it will be entirely up to the RDA quango to decide the regional strategy. In this scenario, the Government would have removed all democratic accountability in the structure. It would be not so much a democratic deficit as a democratic absence if there were no leaders’ boards. Unless a leaders’ board—the only democratic element in any new regional structure—is established, unelected bureaucrats will decide the regional strategy. People know my feelings about regional government; but if we are going to have some of it, it must have a democratic element. I would like the Government to be clearer on how that might work. There should be no circumstances in which the RDA takes decisions without democratic accountability. That is what leaders’ boards are supposed to provide. How long will it take for the system to be sorted out? The Government want to square the circle by showing that there is some democratic choice, but it seems that the Secretary of State will have tremendous powers. The Bill is also silent on the scrutiny process. It might be assumed that the new regional select committees will perform this function. They are not very democratic at the moment, because they have only one party on them. I am not sure that they will work very well anyway. Without Amendments 164B, 164D and 164F, the Secretary of State would have power to amend any regional strategy that he or she felt did not fit in with their own ideas, which again would remove democratic accountability. There have been several recent disagreements between the regional assemblies and the Government. The Government might feel that by setting up this new process, they can remove any opposition to the government policy on area strategy. Again, I would like more clarity on that. All in all, we need to know a lot more about the leaders’ boards, about what they are going to do, the Secretary of State’s power over them and how they are going to operate in an integrated democratic system within each region. I beg to move.