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Localism Bill

My Lords, I enthusiastically support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord True. I do not want to repeat everything he said about the common sense of building on existing successful systems and structures rather than trying either to set up a separate parallel structure, as the noble Lord suggested may well happen, or alternatively closing down something that exists or trying to transform it into a template imposed from on high. I have been involved in the idea of getting people in communities to take a much greater involvement in local affairs generally, and in planning specifically, for about 40 years now. Forty years ago, when some of us started to talk like this, we met total opposition, and indeed hostility, from almost everybody else in British politics outside the Liberal Party at that time. Opinion has so changed that we have won the argument over those years. The last Labour Government talked about double devolution—central government devolving powers, and perhaps even resources, to local authorities and the local authorities devolving them to ““communities””. It never actually happened very much but there was a lot of talk about it. In the present Government we have had the idea of the big society coming from the Conservatives and, separately really but perhaps as part of that—I have never really been quite sure—the idea of neighbourhood planning, which is a very strong part of this Bill. Always, mechanisms are difficult because there are always the questions: ““What is a community?”” and ““Who are the big society?””. Many of us have argued for a long time that, on a democratic basis, the default position is: ““The many, not the few””, as the noble Lord, Lord True, said. A neighbourhood is a clearly definable entity, unlike a community which is much more difficult to define as you may have several communities in a neighbourhood. In a neighbourhood you start off from the basis that everybody who lives there is a member of that neighbourhood and you build it from the bottom upwards. Of course, some do not want to take part in it but that is up to them. As regards who in the neighbourhood area takes part, lots of councils of pretty well all dispositions have been working hard on this idea in their patches. In a truly localist way, they are approaching the matter in different ways that are appropriate to their area, the ideas of the people who live in that area and, indeed, the people on the local authority, so the systems that exist in many parts of the country are different. There are obviously similarities but, basically, each area has built its own system according to its own circumstances: the noble Lord waxes lyrical about Richmond; my noble friend Lord Tope could wax equally lyrical about Sutton; and I could go on for ever about attempts to do all this in Pendle, some of which have been very successful. Many others could make similar remarks, but the systems are all different. However, the real problem arises when central government comes along and, in order to do something which is very worth while, imposes a national template on very different systems. Where there is nothing at all, that is a good way to tackle this matter as at least you get people going. However, where measures exist on the ground, it is counterproductive and, indeed, ridiculous to force people to spend a lot of time either closing something down in order to start something else up or, indeed, trying to adjust and adapt to the new rules and regulations coming from on high. Therefore, I very much support this amendment. If nothing else, I hope that the Government will be rather more flexible in carrying out this measure than seems to be the case at the moment.