Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, from what she has said, I do not think that I am going to persuade the noble Baroness. I shall have to repeat a little of what I said in Committee about the RDAs. The RDAs are committed to openness. They are subject to freedom of information and the model publication scheme for NDPBs, which has been produced by the Information Commissioner. That means that they make public the roles and responsibilities of senior staff, minutes of meetings, details of major policy proposals and decisions, as well as information on many other matters. They consult on their corporate plans, which are published. A considerable amount of material is available on their websites. We believe that all this creates a high level of public access to RDA matters without compromising their actions and decisions. RDAs regularly deal with commercially confidential and sensitive information, and there is a different set of considerations in relation to the interests that they are providing for. Amendment 163 addresses joint working, and I am sympathetic to the challenge. This is not straightforward, because leaders’ boards and RDAs are very different bodies, as the noble Baroness agreed. Not only that, but their joint working arrangements, as the responsible regional authorities, are yet to be agreed and will vary between regions. Inventing a blanket provision on access to information that was not intended for these circumstances carries a risk of, at least, being inappropriate and, at worst, having unintended consequences for RDAs. However, the noble Baroness raised some important points on joint working, and I have not been able to come back with a solution. I will consider the process further with a view to a possible amendment in the other place. I would wish to be satisfied that provisions such as public access to meetings set out in Part 5A could usefully also be applied to joint meetings that the leaders’ boards have with RDAs, while safeguarding the particular interests of the RDAs.