Localism Bill

My Lords, I support in some measure the remarks of my noble friend Lord Tope. I hear what is said about the Centre for Public Scrutiny and all its recommendations. Equally, I hear all that the Government want to say about scrutiny. I am sure that there are two very worthy industries involved here that may well come together. I support the recommendation that my noble friend has made to come forward with thickets of advice to local authorities on these subjects—may the twain meet. However, as this debate goes on, I sometimes wonder whether the end result might be that parts of the Government involved in providing guidance and regulations could be hived off as a social enterprise, perhaps co-operating with other areas in local government. They could sell the benefits of their advice to local authorities and we might be able to reduce the size of government and perhaps, in partnership, improve the quality of advice. That is a slightly impish suggestion but, on the other hand, it is not entirely without seriousness. I particularly support Amendment 47A, which addresses the point made by my noble friend Lord Greaves. I think that it would allow issues that were not technically local government matters to be referred to scrutiny. I support Amendment 48A on a probing basis. It would delete from the Bill the words: "““Guidance under subsection (3) may make different provision for different cases””." This means that if a member of an authority wants to say to a scrutiny chairman, ““I think this is something you need to look into””, first, he has to refer to the existing legislation, which is before us, and look up the bible of guidance that will be issued by the government department. He may then find that that guidance makes different provision for different cases, with scrutiny into this or that or some other circumstances, and he is therefore entering a potential nightmare world. I know that my noble friend, local government and outside advisers do not want to go there, but I return to my general point. I hope that those discussions can take place but I hope that the presiding principle in all this will be to minimise the requirements on local authorities to read, mark, learn, inwardly digest and obey. Let us please have localism.