Localism Bill

My Lords, I associate myself strongly with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. I know from conversations that Ministers are gaining some private amusement from the number of times that local authorities are asking them when guidance will be issued. They are saying that local authorities cannot get hold of the idea of localism—that they will be allowed to do what they want to do and guidance will not be issued. The reason for this is that local government has for years and years become increasingly used to detailed guidance and regulations being issued. It has come to expect it and at times to require it. It will take a little time to adjust to a change of culture—if, indeed, there is one. When Ministers had the good, original idea for what we now call the Localism Bill, it received a wide general welcome in outline across the board before the Bill was published—I stress, before the Bill was published. The idea of a Bill on the concept of localism—whatever we mean exactly by that, and we have had that debate—which devolved more power and responsibility to local authorities and enabled them to act and do things in the way that best suited them and their local conditions was of course going to be recognised. However, I suspect that as work on the Bill went on in ever more detail the usual risk aversion came into play, and those drafting the Bill looked increasingly at the dreadful fears of ““what if”” and ““supposing that”” and came up with a Bill which, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and others have eloquently said, does anything but set local government free. It both prescribes and allows the Secretary of State to prescribe in extraordinary detail many of the things that local government has grown used to expecting. If we are to break that kind of dependency culture, which much of local government now has, we need a different approach from that contained in or allowed by much of the Bill.