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Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

I sympathise hugely with what the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has said. I was much amused, but equally horrified, by the journey made by the inspectors from Bristol as they travelled around, ostensibly inspecting where the visitation of development should be placed in his neck of the woods. I sympathise with him not simply because he and I have race courses in our constituencies, but because he described the utter absurdity of this Government's activities in that area of public policy. That absurdity is highlighted and reinforced by the title of the Bill. Others have mentioned it, but it is worth repeating. It is the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. Let us forget for the purposes of my remarks the aspect of the Bill to do with construction and concentrate on whether it will produce or encourage local democracy or have any effect on economic development. The provisions in the Bill to set up economic prosperity boards remind me of some sort of Soviet plan or communist China—the direct command economy systems that we thought had died out in the 1980s before the collapse of the iron curtain. But no, this absurd Government, in the final days of their death throes, are coming up with the language of the communist era and the idiotic hope that by passing laws that mean nothing, they will achieve something. It was notable that the Secretary of State could not be bothered to tell me, when I intervened, how many artificial quangos, boards and other forms of public authority she was creating, or how many they would replace. I suspect that they will not replace any, and that there will be a doubling or trebling of the number of absurd bodies created by this absurd Government in their dying days. I remind the House that this Government are past masters at the misuse of language. Here we have the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. I remember in 1998, as the shadow Minister for what was then the Lord Chancellor's Department, having to face up to the current Secretary of State for Transport, who in those days was a Minister in that Department. He was introducing to Parliament something called the Access to Justice Bill. If any piece of legislation did more to deny access to justice, I have yet to see it. Since then, an avalanche of Bills have been passed by Parliament, at the behest of this Government, with names that wholly misdescribe the purpose and intent behind their contents. They have all been the size of a telephone book, and the current Bill is no exception. They have all had many pages, schedules and clauses. Looking at the back of them, one finds that they all repealed huge chunks of legislation passed in the recent past by this Government. I find it difficult to admire a Government who continually behave as though passing Bills were the answer to all our problems and do not concentrate on the issues that need to be dealt with. The fatuous nature of the Bill is highlighted in its early stages, as I pointed out to the Secretary of State. Clause 1, "Democratic arrangements of principal local authorities", states:""A principal local authority has a duty to promote understanding of the following among local people…the functions of the authority…the democratic arrangements of the authority"" and""how members of the public can take part in those democratic arrangements and what is involved in taking part."" Those are perfectly laudable aims, but it strikes me that they are not the priority ambition of a local authority. Sensibly, and at an economic public outlay, its priority ambition is to deliver public services at a local level. We do not need an Act of Parliament to tell a local authority how to give a civics lesson, yet the early part of the Bill is designed to do precisely that. When I intervened on the Secretary of State to ask her why it is thought appropriate for a principal local authority to have a duty to promote understanding of the functions of other bodies, which are not local authorities—I cited independent monitoring boards established under the Prison Act 1952, courts boards and youth offending teams—the answer was a stream of new Labour garbage. That was followed by an inability to explain clause 4, which states:""A principal local authority has a duty to promote understanding among local people of… the functions of a lay justice"—" a justice of the peace or a magistrate. There are plenty of people beyond a local authority who can sensibly tell the people in that local authority area what a lay justice does,""how a member of the public can become a lay justice"" and""what is involved in being a lay justice."" That is not a function of a local authority. Yes, individuals, citizens and residents in a local authority area, some of whom may be local authority members, can have an interest in what a magistrate does and what is involved in being a lay justice, but surely it is not a function of a local authority, whether a district or a county council, to promulgate the sort of thing in clauses 3 and 4. Let me use some local examples to deal with the revisions of regional strategy and other matters in part 5. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) has said, the local citizen, resident and elector is most closely touched and affected by a local authority's work through planning matters. I assure the Minister for Local Government and his colleagues that my constituents in Harborough are far more concerned about planning matters than discovering from Harborough district council or Leicestershire county council what a lay magistrate does. I also assure the Minister that, if he came to my constituency, he would be left in no doubt about my constituents' views of several things and what the Government could do with them. The biggest local planning problem that currently faces my constituency is a plan dreamed up by the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which, by an extraordinary coincidence, comes from Greater Manchester, like the Secretary of State—I put that to one side. It owns 5,000 acres of reasonable, albeit not prime, agricultural land, which it has farmed since just after the first world war. In the past 18 years, since I became a Member of Parliament for the constituency, it has attempted three times to build on it. I understand why it wants to do that, because, at the moment, one gets more money from building houses than from farming. However, if people are to behave as good neighbours, they should take account of their neighbours' concerns when they decide to build additional housing. We are considering not an eco-village of 2,000 or 3,000 people, but a massive new town of 40,000 people—twice the size of Market Harborough. That great town will be plonked—parachuted into the middle of rural Leicestershire—between Market Harborough, to its south, and Leicester, immediately to its north-west. The Co-operative Wholesale Society doubtless reckons that, given its close relations with the Labour party and the use of the word "eco" stuck in front of "town", it has a swimming chance of getting the town of 40,000 people up and running. If we are to have local democracy, economic development and sensible construction, the Bill will not appease my constituents if the eco-town plan goes through. We have agreement in Harborough district and with Labour Members who represent the city of Leicester—I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) in his place—and the affected Conservative Members, who are me and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan). This is not all that unusual, but we even have agreement from Liberal Democrat district and county councillors. We also have agreement from the best run county council in the country, Leicestershire, which is run by Mr. David Parsons—I hope that he is returned with a thumping great majority on Thursday, along with an increased number of Conservative councillors. We also have agreement with the citizenry—the voters, the electorate—of those parts of Leicestershire that will be most directly affected by this appalling scheme. But what has happened? The Government pay absolutely no attention to cross-party or individual objections, nor does the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which has behaved with the tin ear of some petty despot, as it seeks to railroad the plan through, with the connivance of central Government, to the detriment of my constituents.