My Lords, I rise briefly in this debate to support Amendment 69 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. When I was listening, I read it and I am actually quite surprised by what the Government are doing—the disapplication of the duty of allocate seats to political groups. It seems perverse to me that the Government would do this. We are going to bring in these county combined authorities, whereby we bring people together across large areas who were not engaged, were not involved—and we want people to participate in this. Where would you be if you were trying to join one of these county authorities and you thought, “Hang on here, I am from one political group and we control this council, but all the other councils are controlled by my political opponents. I can join here, but then I will be taken off all the committees.” Why would you do that? It just seems perverse. I would be really interested to see how the Government can justify this when the Minister responds.
I really do think that the Government need to go away and think about that. It seems only fair to me that, if you are going to bring a combined authority together and you have elected politicians in all those authorities that come together, if they are from different groups, they should have representation on the Executive. I cannot see why you would want to take them off. Surely, you would want to hear their views. They are from different parts. I know there are proposals for a combined authority covering Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. I used to work up there, and that is a huge area. The thought that one group could be excluded from that because they were not of the same political group—the larger group there—is just perverse. I do not understand why the Government would suggest that and want to do that. I am really looking forward to the Minister’s response to justify this. I hope that, maybe, he may agree to take it back to the department and suggest that they have overstepped the mark and that it should be removed at Report.