Lord Shipley (LD)

My Lords, I want to thank the Minister for introducing this third round of ping-pong and for her willingness to listen to alternative points of view and effect numerous changes to the Bill. The Government have demonstrated that willingness to compromise and alter. For me, this has been an example of the House of Lords doing a very good job that it is supposed to do, and that examination of the Bill has been a success. As the Minister knows, I have said a lot during the stages of the Bill about the governance of local authorities; indeed, we have voted several times on those issues. I have come to accept that the time has come for the primacy of the House of Commons to be acknowledged. They are the elected Chamber; they have considered the issues we raised around governance, and they have concluded they want a single system based on a cabinet model. I remain convinced that local people should have a choice of governance models and that the 38 councils currently operating a committee system should be allowed to continue to do so for as long as they wish to do that. I also think that councils operating a cabinet model that wish in the future to change to a committee system should have the right to do so, led by local people. As the Minister has heard several times, I have been critical of the Short Title of the Bill. It is called a devolution and community empowerment Bill; it is actually a Bill about decentralisation and does not do a great deal for community empowerment. But we have what we have, and we can build on it. I said at the very start of the passage of this Bill at Second Reading that I wanted it to succeed, and I really do. England is, with 56 million people, overcentralised. It is a process, not an event, when you devolve power to others. We all have to do that, and I think we can build on it. It requires all parties to work together to give a reality to the desire for greater devolution in England. As the Minister said a moment ago, this is about sparking growth, and a test for whether this devolution is a success is whether growth is sparked. I hope the Minister will take seriously the commitment the Government have entered into for an annual review and update as to the success of the Bill. There was also a proposal in Committee or on Report for a five-year review in some detail, and I think the Government will have to do that as well. The jury is out on whether the Government are fulfilling the objectives they set for the Bill—within the Bill itself and in the White Paper on which it was built—and they will have to do a lot of work to make sure that they are. I am aware there has been a long debate around brownfield and I am going to give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, who will talk about that in greater detail since she led on that amendment. But I hear the reasons that the Minister has given. It is clear to me that there is a will to build on brownfield first. I think we all share the ambition to deliver housing targets and to deliver the development that the country needs. There is a protection in the amendment that the Government have brought in, and I am hopeful that the compromise that has occurred will be a productive one. In conclusion, I thank the Minister for the way in which the Bill has been managed. It has, in my view, been a model. I have appreciated that personally and I know my group have. We are in the midst now of creating a list of all the changes that have been made to the Bill. It is substantial, and that is due to the way in which the Government have entered the debate that we have had about how to improve devolution and community empowerment in England. I thank the Minister very much for that.