Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 136 in my name. We have just had a debate on the levelling-up Act approach of allowing local planning authorities to choose whether to join together to create a spatial development strategy. The Government are going down the route of a mandatory spatial development strategy, but in the latter route, as the Bill is written at the moment, it reserves to the Secretary of State the determination of whether to require a spatial development strategy to be created by the mechanism of appointing or requiring the establishment of a strategic planning board. I was interested in the way the Minister described the policy, saying that there was a degree of transition and flexibility in this, particularly in the context of developing local government reorganisation. There is a potential role for principal authorities, in the terminology of my amendment and the Bill, to come together to ask the Secretary of State whether they might proceed with the formation of a spatial development strategy. I quite take the point that, in the long run, the question will not arise because all the strategic authorities will have a strategic development strategy, but we are talking about the transition and the interim. Giving local authorities the opportunity to come forward with a proposal to the Government seems an inherent part of the flexibility that the Minister is talking about.