Localism Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the great care that he has taken in responding to these amendments. We might get on a bit quicker on one or two of them if the people providing him with his briefings understood that, often in Committee in this House, we put down ““leave out”” amendments in order to find out what things mean and how they will work, rather than delete them. We are not actually always trying to get rid of them. I realise that sometimes they have to guess which it is, but that is the case. There is a difference of approach. Some of us would like to have a much clearer high-level duty placed on local authorities and other bodies and far less detailed regulations on how to do it. Some of us would like to rely on that, rather than have a weaker duty and then masses of detailed regulations. The duty to co-operate is a classic case of that. On the central issue of whether the duty in this part of the Bill is as strong as it needs to be, some further discussion will be required before we are finished with the Bill. There is a feeling in quite a bit of the Committee that perhaps it would be a good thing if we could find ways of strengthening the duty a bit further without resulting in even more reams of detailed rules and regulations. I hope that the Minister would be open to discussion of that, in so far as we are able to have discussions over the summer. On that basis, I thank the Minister and everybody who took part in this debate, and I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 147FJ. Amendment 147FJ withdrawn. Amendments A147FK to A147P not moved. Amendment 147Q Moved by