Localism Bill

I will get around to addressing my amendments in a moment. First, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and my noble friend Lord Greaves that there seems to be some need in this section for an ability to knock heads together. My brother first got involved in local politics when, in the local village, there was an ancient wall with a fast-growing young sycamore next to it. At the same moment, the owner of the wall was served with a notice to repair the wall where the tree was knocking it down and a tree preservation order on the tree. I will leave it to noble Lords to guess which party was in control of the district council at the time. It is hard enough to get a council to co-operate with itself, let alone two councils, particularly in the example that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, gave of Stevenage, where what is being asked of one council it really does not want to give and the residents do not want it to give. In those circumstances, some higher ability to make the process happen is important. I have two questions to ask my noble friend on the Front Bench. First, I do not expect him to answer immediately, but how on earth are we going to finish this Bill in the time allotted? Looking at the time that we will take discussing neighbourhood planning, all the bits on housing and all the other bits, how can we accomplish all that is to come in in effect two and a bit days? It just does not seem possible. It must have consequences for how late the House sits. It may well have consequences for what days the House sits on. Thursday appears to be available if we stretch things a bit. I do not know, but it no longer seems possible to fit it into the time that we are supposed to be fitting it into, and I would like the Government to come clean with us as to how we are going to solve this conundrum. My noble friend might come back after the Statement with a long cape and a top hat and pull the proverbial rabbit out of it. Short of that, a plain answer from him via my noble friend the Chief Whip will be much appreciated. Lastly, I hope my noble friend will not be troubled by my two amendments. Their purpose is to draw attention to the question of how, under this Bill, you have to pick a particular place to install a facility if you want to establish a network. It does not matter much where. It will affect only one local authority, but there is a choice of several local authorities into which it could go. Two examples come to mind. One is a rail head for the transfer of freight from road to rail and vice versa. You can probably put that in quite a number of places on the network, but how are you going to decide where to put it? For a pure road transport network, given current regulations, you need to develop places where lorry drivers can sleep overnight. Again, you have a wide choice along the motorway network of where these things should be. You have to produce several of them. They are quite big facilities these days. They are not just a field with some tarmac in it. They have to be secure, they have to be lit and they will have other facilities; but how are you going to decide where on the network these areas get put? It is important for the national network that these things exist, but local authorities will have to co-operate in deciding where they should be. I see nothing in the definition of ““strategic””, at the bottom of page 72, that allows such matters to be included in this part of the Bill.