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Localism Bill

My Lords, I wish to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Best, as he referred to me. It follows from my arguments on my own amendment that I think there are many cases where a referendum is not necessary. Indeed, my amendment suggested that local authorities should be able to proceed without the need for referendums. Therefore, I was interested to hear about the discussions that the noble Lord mentioned. As he knows, I am not axiomatically against all referendums. There is a place for a referendum in some circumstances to empower those who are disempowered or, indeed, to resolve a genuine heated dispute in a community. However, for the reasons the noble Lord implied, I could not support Amendment 207 because it would give too much potential power to an individual councillor. This may not be the case only as regards councillors from a minority party. In my authority five out of 18 wards are split wards with minority representation. Frankly, there are wards where everybody is nominally of the same party but they cannot stand each other, although that does not apply in my authority, of course. Therefore, there is scope for a lot of potential mischief. The threat of provoking a referendum, which would cost money unless someone does something for someone else behind closed doors, is probably better avoided. In other respects I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment. In the context of the discussions, I encourage the noble Lord to follow the direction in which he has begun to move.