Localism Bill

My Lords, my Amendments 146 and 147 in this group have been slightly overtaken by the paper that my noble friend has put in the Library, by her opening remarks today and, indeed, by the remarks of other noble Lords during the preceding debate. I am aware that the timescales for the moratorium are controversial, and I quite understand the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about the difficulty of getting together local initiatives and getting them to the financing stage. The simple purpose of Amendment 146 is to encourage the Government to put on the face of the Bill the moratorium periods for the interim window of opportunity, the full window of opportunity and the protected period. As a result, Amendment 147 would remove from the Bill the power to change this by regulation. I seek to do that really for the reasons given by my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising. I think that this issue is sufficiently important and goes sufficiently deep into our culture and into the structure of our society that these periods should not be able to be altered by means of a statutory instrument, which I think Members on all sides of the House would agree do not get quite the scrutiny that they often deserve, in the sense that voting down a statutory instrument is always a nuclear deterrent and so is a very rare thing indeed. As a matter of principle, there is a strong reason for having the time periods on the face of the Bill, although I am less concerned about what those time periods are. As my noble friend Lord Howard has said, most communities will know that something is happening and, therefore, they will not start de novo from the day that a decision is announced; they will know that the particular service or shop or whatever is in trouble and, therefore, will be able to begin to get their act together. However, there is clearly a difficulty or problem or issue with timing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, referred. I am just concerned that we have clarity about the timings on the face of the Bill, which should not be capable of being altered for better or for worse—for longer or for shorter—by a future Government.