Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for taking the matter on board and for her generous comments. I am happy to see Amendment 160D. I take it that the words ““necessary or expedient”” are benign and merely ensure that the arrangements work appropriately. They could be read differently but I shall choose not to do so. My first amendment in the group covers leaders’ boards. I accept that the Local Government Act needs tweaking to apply to the leaders’ boards arrangements. My second and third amendments in the group would apply the same provisions on access to meetings, documents and information to responsible regional authorities—that is, the leaders’ boards and RDAs acting together—and to RDAs separately. I have no doubt that regional development agencies are not homogenous and do not all operate in precisely the same manner. However, I found it difficult to accept fully the comments that the noble Baroness made in Committee on 9 February at col. GC 312 of the Official Report. She assured the Committee that the process applied by RDAs was ““inclusive and transparent””, and she also said: "““That approach has worked well in the past in involving communities. If we went further, I believe that we would end up with more bureaucracy. We would have inflexibility and not necessarily greater transparency””.—[Official Report, 9/2/09; col. GC 312.]" I simply disagree with her on that point. It seems to me from my observation of some of the RDAs that there is a presumption of confidentiality rather than a presumption of openness, and it is hard not to feel that the role of the RDAs, in the way that matters are dealt with, is growing. Transparency and the perception of propriety—I am not making allegations of impropriety—are hugely important. I had little expectation that we would convince the Government of this. Indeed, RDAs are not bodies that now fall within the department of the noble Baroness, and I dare say that there is a different culture in different departments in government. The ““responsible regional authority”” seems to me to be a distinct entity in the way in which it is described—RDAs and local leaders’ boards acting jointly—and it should follow the local authority model, or the local authority model as applied through the Minister’s amendment, rather than the model applied by the regional development agency. That was why I tabled that amendment, which comes perhaps somewhere in the middle of the other two.