I am coming to that point, but I anticipate that they would. I will just deal with this point, because there is a complication here. In devolved areas, many of these issues will be matters for the devolved Administration dealing with the relevant bodies. That has to be catered for too. Clearly some non-devolved matters would be part of the arrangement relating to this legislation, but we have to recognise that there are some that are rightly the prerogative of devolved Administrations.
This is the important point, which I hope goes some way to answer the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. My colleague in the other place, the Minister for Local Government, Rishi Sunak, will carry this forward with the local government associations’ representatives, and we will update the House on the progress made by the next stage of the Bill. I anticipate that in seeking to replicate the arrangements it will take that forward. We need to allow those discussions to take place with the Minister in charge of local government. I will report back on this on Report.
I will deal with the relevant points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked about the importance of the European Social Fund, the European structural funds, steel, community energy and so on. I anticipate that all these points will come within the ambit of the new arrangements.
My noble friend Lord Porter of, I think, South Holland made it clear that he had consultation and discussion with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the DExEU teams. That is very much on the record.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, talked about the regions of England being left out of the devolution arrangements. I readily recognise that point. It came up in a wide-ranging discussion that, apart from the city mayors—I take the noble Lord’s point about Yorkshire not quite being there at the moment, but it will eventually be there with the might of the whole of the county, so I hope that will progress—there
is, I readily recognise, a dimension in England that is not answered by the devolution arrangements that exist for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, spoke with feeling and passion about the importance of the Committee of the Regions. He was clearly very much part of it. In this House we have the collective wisdom of many noble Lords as to how that operated very effectively.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about the paradox of devolution. I recognise some of the points he made, although I do not necessarily agree with all of them. He talked about the regions of England having some of the highest Brexit votes. That is true, but we should not ignore the fact that some very high Brexit votes were in the valleys of Wales. That happened not just where there was an absence of some substructure of government. I think that the highest yes vote in Wales was in Conservative Monmouthshire, so these things are perhaps not quite as simple as they may seem.