Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

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.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken at this stage of the Bill, I remind noble Lords of my various interests and activities. I am a chartered surveyor, a vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils, and a member of the Country Land and Business Association. Probably none of them really clashes with what I am about to say. However, I do have fundamental concerns about these CCAs. How is this extra tier going to be funded or how will it generate its own income, in whole or in part? Will they truly meet what the Minister referred to as the transparency and accountability test that he set in the previous group? Will those standards always be routed in democratic accountability and the norms and conduct to be expected thereby, or something else?

I relate to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about ever-greater centralism in the Bill generally. That is a disturbing trend, especially when this whole levelling-up Bill, if you like, was gazetted as something that was going be better for communities. I see the thing drawing away from everything I understand community to be, and recognised it as, when I was president of NALC. This seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

The lack of clarity and specificity, presented as a freedom of CCAs to organise and manage their own affairs to some extent, is another area which is not clear from the Bill. The real acid test is whether this will result in citizen confidence in what we are doing. It cannot be otherwise. This is not something we can do from the top down, saying, “Oh well, they’ll like it, won’t they?” This has to be rooted in confidence in communities and among the citizenry generally.

Specifically, on this clause, the associate members are a special area of what I see as potential democratic dilution. Voting or not, these associates will have position and influence in debate and the processes going on. Let us not get too hung up about precisely whether they will be voting, because they will obviously have a lot of important functions notwithstanding. But who might they be? One can think of all sorts of worthy individuals representing important sectors of the community, but what about a property developer? What about a telecoms or construction company executive, who might have a particular interest in being involved in a particular area, or an investor linked to a sovereign wealth fund? The list goes on. What about a pressure group? The real question is: do these pass the test of citizen credibility when looked at from that area, bearing in mind that this is a body that is going to add another tier to the process we have all become familiar with and, to some extent, used to?

Could the noble Earl give us some reassurance as to who these associates might be? There has to be some overarching principle that sits behind their appointment and the functions they are able to deal with. If not, we would be signing some sort of operational blank cheque to these bodies. I hope he will be able to provide me with an answer to that point, which concerns me very much.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, when I spoke earlier, I should have referred to my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I apologise to the Committee for that.