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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I hope I will not detain the House for long on this set of amendments. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, I tabled them as probing amendments that are intended to be helpful to the Government by giving them an opportunity to think again about some of the issues at stake. The issue is the broader subject of the future of economic regeneration policy—regional development policy—and we will obviously have a political debate about this when we come to Schedule 1. Several of us will move amendments to delete from the schedule the abolition of the regional development agencies. That is not the purpose of this set of amendments, however, which assume we will be largely unsuccessful. They are basically about the architecture of the scene on that assumption. The point of Amendment 12 is basically that the local enterprise partnerships that are being set up should be one of the ““eligible persons”” to whom functions can be transferred in this situation. At the moment there is a lot of concern out there that these bodies are being set up without assets, money or any clear role. This is an opportunity for the Government to clarify that they intend them to have clear functions and that they will be taking powers to transfer functions to them. This is therefore an opportunity to help the Government to reassure people that this is the case. Secondly, the Government have said that their policy in this area is motivated by localism and that they want to ensure that there is more local control over these things. They have painted the regional development agencies as a top-down new Labour monstrosity that was not really the localist solution favoured by the coalition Government. Amendment 16 basically states that if one accepts that that is the motivation—of course, I am willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt if that proves to be the case—then surely the Government should transfer the functions of the abolished RDAs to local bodies within the region rather than centralising them. Again, the fear is that many of the officials who never liked the setting up of the RDAs in the first place will grab back these powers to the centre: that they have taken advantage of the feeling of localism that inspired the Government’s proposals and have said, ““Right, we shall take back to the centre many of these functions””. I do not think that that is what the Government intended, and the purpose of Amendment 16 is to prevent the Government from centralising these functions and to keep them at a regional or local level. I beg to move.