Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, talked about fiscal devolution. We have already agreed with Greater Manchester about the retention of 100% of additional business rates, providing a very powerful incentive to drive local growth, but we are not ruling anything in or out at this stage. We are very interested to hear from all areas how they see fiscal devolution working. With those assurances—

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, I wonder whether I might take her back to the comments that she made about the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, on which I sit. I think she said that your Lordships’ House would have an opportunity to see the Government’s response to the important recommendations from that committee before the end of Committee stage; perhaps she would confirm that. I draw her attention particularly to the recommendation in paragraph 29—it is rather different from the others, which are very detailed—in which the committee says:

“In line with our conclusions in paragraph 22 above, we consider that, if the Government believe that the negative procedure is the appropriate level of scrutiny for particular categories of modifications of primary legislation, they should specify those categories in clause 55”.

There is a wider issue here, which the committee draws attention to: in parallel with the consideration of the full Bill, we also have an LRO on some specific powers, which I understand was prepared before the general election—certainly before the Bill was being prepared by the current Government. I wonder if the Minister can give some assurance to your Lordships’ House that these two quite separate exercises will at some point be brought together. Otherwise, the lack of co-ordination is a matter of concern to the committee and, I think, will be a matter of concern to Members of the House.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I can confirm just what the noble Lord thought he heard, which was that we would be responding before the end of Committee stage and that the LRO would be incorporated into the Bill.