Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

I am pleased to be here today because I thought that after the events of a couple of weeks ago we would not get the Bill before the House again. It is thanks to the actions of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that we have once again returned to this most welcome Bill. Amendment 1 would remove the useful flexibility that the Bill introduces. In other words, instead of being able to make decisions on each of the 242 distinct requests contained in the 199 separate proposals that we have received under the Sustainable Communities Act, the Secretary of State would be obliged to decide on all requests contained in each proposal. Given that Oxford city council, for instance, submitted a proposal with 25 individual requests for action, amendment 1 would require us to take a blanket approach to all of them, which would mean that we could lose some good proposals. Also, instead of being able to introduce some proposals immediately and some a little later, we would not have the flexibility that the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) gives us. Clause 1 is a common-sense clause. It will speed up and enable decisions rather than slow them down. Amendment 5 would get in the way of flexibility in the process for inviting, considering and deciding upon proposals. It would remove the flexibility that the Bill gives us and make the process for deciding upon proposals much less flexible. The amendment and a deadline fixed by primary legislation would give less opportunity for organisations such as the Local Government Association to influence the Secretary of State's decision, and it could result in him deciding not to implement a complex proposal because he did not have the time to consider it in detail. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) mentioned extending invitations to unelected bodies. Parish councils might be on the lowest rung of local democracy, but in the areas I know well they are by no means the least important. We wish to see them included.