Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

The estimate from some of the sources that we have been speaking to about this is that the legal services team could have a per case cost of pursuing a breach of about £800 to £1,500 per breach. Is that realistically going to happen? Will breaches be pursued at all when the costs are so high at a time of such limited resources?

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

The noble Baroness has made some extremely interesting points. I was with her for quite a long time. Will she tell us the equivalent cost for pursuing an ASBO? Why does she think that an IPNA that is breached and results in imprisonment is actually weaker than an ASBO?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

The reason why an IPNA is weaker is because it is not an automatic criminal matter if it is breached. That is what makes it weaker. It is quite right that there is a higher test for bringing in an ASBO in the first place. It is not just a case of annoyance or nuisance, but harassment, harm or distress and if an ASBO is breached then it is automatically a criminal matter. It is not with an IPNA. That is why it is a weaker remedy for those suffering from severe anti-social behaviour.

[Lord Greaves]

Does the noble Baroness have the answer to my question about the cost of an ASBO? My understanding is that it is comparable, but I may be wrong. If I were to breach an ASBO and ended up in prison, or if I were to breach an IPNA and ended up in prison, would my experience in prison be much different?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I just hope that that never happens to the noble Lord. I am sure that he would never give this House any cause to accuse him of nuisance or annoyance and therefore breach his IPNA. Actually, it would make a difference. If somebody breaches their IPNA and it goes to the full conclusion of being taken to court and their receiving a custodial sentence, the level at which they have breached is very low. With an ASBO, there is a much higher threshold. In terms of costs, my information is from the police, who say that it is a more complex process to pursue breach of an IPNA than it is with the automatic breach of an ASBO. We also see the number of breaches of ASBOs, because of their seriousness, coming down. That is why the police indicate to us that they think that there are significantly greater costs in dealing with a breach of an IPNA.

I do not know if the noble Lord had the opportunity to read the reports in the other place of the evidence-taking sessions before the clauses were debated. Gavin Thomas, who is the vice-president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said,

“there is a cost because we have to have people to pull together the case, take it to court and enforce it, so there is a cost”.—[Official Report, Commons, Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, 18/6/13; col. 9.]

In written evidence to the Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, who spoke eloquently at Second Reading, said that she was concerned,

“that the injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance could potentially add to the workload of front line officers because of their lack of knowledge of civil law”.

That is a matter that has been raised by the police as well.

We hear quite horrific tales of anti-social behaviour. We should be under no illusion that it is just nuisance and annoyance on the odd occasion; there are some serious cases. As a former Member of the other place, I dealt with constituents. In one case, a man could no longer sleep in his home, another would sleep on the kitchen floor; somebody else was too frightened to go to sleep. Those were ongoing cases.

In some cases, enforcement was the problem, but we need to have the right tools. The Government are seeking in the legislation to reduce the number of tools available to those taking action and then to put in place additional costs, which will make action difficult to enforce. I am asking the Minister for an explanation of why, when ASBOs are becoming more effective, are working and have a value, they are being reduced.

The Minister is shaking his head at me, but there is a great deal of difference between somebody causing nuisance and annoyance and somebody causing harm, distress and harassment. They are very different and there are times when different measures are appropriate. So far, I do not think that the noble Lord has satisfied people in your Lordships’ House, on amendments to other clauses or on this one, as to why the Government are seeking to deal with just annoyance and nuisance while losing the measure of an ASBO, which has served us well. It is not perfect, and we are happy to see changes to it, but the changes which the Government propose do not address the problem.

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[Lord Greaves]

I am trying to match what the noble Lord is talking about to my experience in Lancashire. It is a large, far-flung county from the Fylde coast to the Pennines, from Morecambe and Lancaster south to Skelmersdale and places like that—if there are any places like that. Perhaps the noble Lord can help me. I cannot understand what a new strategy document for the whole county, taking lots of resources in drawing it up, will add to anything in a place like Lancashire. Surely what is required is the allocation of resources and priorities at the county force level—which is Lancashire County Council, plus Blackburn and Blackpool—then local action plans and strategies at perhaps the borough level, tackling the problems on the ground.

Surely the answers, as the noble Lord said, will be different everywhere. The answers in old textile towns in Pendle and Burnley will be very different from Skelmersdale, which is a Liverpool new town suburb, or the rural areas of west Lancashire, or indeed the seaside towns of Blackpool and Morecambe, for example. What is surely needed is a series of local action plans involving the district councils and councillors and the bodies on the ground which are doing the work, as well as the police, not just another county-wide strategy which will get put on shelves and forgotten.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will forgive me if I do not join him in his encyclopaedic tour of the townships of Lancashire. In fact, this amendment does not necessarily suggest that there is a single county-wide strategy, because I, like him, would accept that what works in one area would not be appropriate in another. It talks about,

“the area in which the court sits”,

and there will be different courts in different parts of the county. The relevance of this is that each of the local authorities in the area should contribute to the preparation of the plan, because this must be something which is agreed at local level. It is the absence of that agreed joint strategy, working together at local level, which is the omission in this Bill.

This could be a subsidiary part of the police and crime plan, or it could be built from the crime and disorder partnerships which exist at local authority level, but what is missing is any cross-reference to those two different processes. If we are to be serious about anti-social behaviour, if we are to make things happen at local level and have the different agencies operating in concert, working together to try to deal with anti-social behaviour, there needs to be some linkage between the existing planning structures.

While I am quite prepared to accept that this amendment does not necessarily deal with the issue precisely, if the Minister does not bring back proposals on Report, then I might well bring proposals to try to link what is being done in this Bill with both the police and crime plan, which commissioners are asked to draw up, and the local crime and disorder arrangements, which exist between the local senior police officer in an area and the chief executive of each local authority area. On that basis of looking forward to the Minister coming forward with some further suggestions about how to integrate these documents, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

21ZB: Clause 4, page 3, line 34, leave out paragraphs (f) and (g)

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, this is a brief amendment to probe why the Environment Agency and its Welsh equivalent, the Natural Resources Body for Wales, are on the list in Clause 4(1). I will talk about the Environment Agency, which is the one I know most about. Surely the whole question of anti-social behaviour is essentially local while the Environment Agency is a national body, organised regionally. If, within the purpose of the new injunction system, guidance will be given to people to regard injunctions as the last resort and start with local preventive measures such as teams on the ground, working directly with adults and children who are engaging in anti-social behaviour, I do not understand what resources the Environment Agency will have for that work.

If injunctions are to have positive requirements attached to them then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has been explaining, that will require resources: having people on the ground and systems to support, monitor and manage people. I do not understand what resources the Environment Agency has for that. Bodies such as the Environment Agency may well have a role to play in working with other authorities but I do not understand why it requires the ability to apply for injunctions itself, when it seems that it will not have the ability to manage those injunctions or follow them up.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord but he referred to the Natural Resources Body for Wales. I wonder whether he has spoken to the Welsh Government, because they have made it clear that they object to this Bill. For any part of the Bill to be enacted in Wales, there would need to be a legislative consent Motion in the Welsh Assembly, which seems very unlikely at this stage.

[Lord Greaves]

I am sorry, but I did not quite get that. Is the noble Baroness saying that the Welsh Assembly is in favour of this or not?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

No. The Welsh Assembly is not in favour of the Bill and it would need a legislative consent Motion to be passed for it to be in force in Wales.

[Lord Greaves]

I am very grateful for that additional information, which is entirely different from anything that was within my ken or understanding. That is an interesting point but I only included the Welsh body since it made up the set. However, I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s explanation of why he thinks that the Environment Agency not just needs these powers, since other bodies can work with it and do the work, but why it is capable—why it has the resources and competence—to manage injunctions and the people whom they will be served upon. I beg to move.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, we will come to the Welsh relationship with the Bill later on in our consideration of it, if not with this particular amendment. However, I will speak to my noble friend’s amendment, which would see the Environment Agency and its Welsh equivalent removed from the list of bodies that can apply for the new injunction. As my noble friend may or may not know, the Environment Agency has been able to apply for anti-social behaviour orders since 2006. Alongside Transport for London, this was done by an order under Section 1A of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Noble Lords might not be aware of that provision, as it does not appear on the face of that legislation but was done under an order.

The Environment Agency has not used the anti-social behaviour order often but we believe that it should retain access to its replacement so that, as a national body, it can take fast and effective action to tackle serious environmental anti-social behaviour, rather than relying on the police or council. On Report in the House of Commons the list was extended to include the Natural Resources Body for Wales, to give the Environment Agency’s sister body similar access to the injunction. The Natural Resources Body for Wales manages some 6% of Wales’s land area, including many woodland visitor attractions and nature reserves. As such, it should be able to apply for an injunction when someone decides to act anti-socially on that land.

I understand the concerns over too many agencies having access to such an important tool, but I believe that the list included in Clause 4 represents those agencies best placed to protect communities from anti-social behaviour. Both the Environment Agency and the Natural Resources Body for Wales play an important role in ensuring that our environment is welcoming to everybody and they should, I believe, be able to lead court action when that enjoyment is put at risk by anti-social individuals. We will continue to work with bodies such as the Environment Agency to ensure they are prepared for the new power and on that basis I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I still do not understand the logic of having the Environment Agency: why not Network Rail, for example? I can think of a lot of national organisations for which it would be possible to make the same argument. The noble Lord said that the Environment Agency had not used this power very frequently. Will he write to tell me how many times it has used it since it got the power? That would be interesting and helpful.

The specific point I was trying to make is that if injunctions are a weapon of first resort then I can understand why the Environment Agency might want to use it against somebody who does something nasty on a bit of land that it owns, or jumps in a river when they should not. However, I thought that the whole basis of the Bill was that injunctions are not to be a weapon of first resort but a weapon of last resort. I asked what resources the Environment Agency would have to carry out preventive work and management of potential injunctees, if that is what they are called—potential respondents. I did not get an answer. I asked what resources the Environment Agency might have to manage the process of positive requirements. Again, I do not think that there is an answer. I think that the Government are making assertions rather than giving explanations on this.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Perhaps I may just explain. The agency currently has the power to issue ASBOs—that exists. If we were to take that power away, as ASBOs disappear, it would have no equivalent power, unless we replace them with a power which we consider to be most appropriate, the IPNA. I hope my noble friend will understand that we ask the Environment Agency, both in this country and in Wales, to do a lot on our behalf to protect the environment. This is a method whereby it can do just that. I would be very surprised if the noble Lord were not in favour of allowing the Environment Agency to have some successor power to its current power to issue ASBOs.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I understand that very well. I understand that the Environment Agency has those powers, but we are told that it hardly uses them, which is why I am asking how widespread their use is, how many it has actually used since it got this power. That is what the argument is. I hope that I will get that information, but for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21ZB withdrawn.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I start by reminding the House of my interest as a district councillor for Pendle in Lancashire. I think that I should have declared the same interest in a previous Second Reading debate this morning, on the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill. I apologise for not doing so at that time and do so belatedly now.

I, too, support all the past—and probably all the future—speakers in this debate in welcoming this Bill and supporting it. My noble friend Lady Hamwee said that we would hear lots of anecdotes from people about the situation in different areas and I am always reluctant to disappoint my noble friend. One of the main problems in my part of the world in east Lancashire is the theft of metal gully grates. That obviously causes great danger to people and expense to Lancashire County Council, which has to replace them. However, in many cases the county council refuses to replace them because they are in unadopted streets, and so potentially there could be, literally all over the place, very dangerous large square holes, particularly in back streets, which at this time of the year will be full of leaves and litter. In the event, it comes down to the borough council of Pendle and town and parish councils to put their hands in their pockets and provide the money for replacing the gully grates because relying on house owners and landlords to do so is an impossible situation.

There are also real problems with back yards in closely packed terraced streets, where people will simply take away anything that is left in a back yard, or they will go in and take pieces of the downspouts and the troughings—anything that they can come round and check out and then return at two o’clock in the morning to remove. I received an ironic telephone call fairly recently. Pendle council has a service for taking away washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and anything like that. You leave it out in the back yard, tell the council you want it removed and it comes and takes it away. Somebody rang me up and asked why the council was employing people to remove their washing machine at two o’clock in the morning. Of course, it was not the council but somebody who was taking it away and doing the council’s job for it. We hear accounts from the local police, who are obviously involved in all this, that raiding parties from over the border in Yorkshire often come and take away all this stuff. This seems to be their excuse, although it appears that people do come over the border from Yorkshire and steal our stuff. It is not just metal either. Metal theft is just part and parcel of a wider problem. This Bill is clearly restricted to metal theft.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

May I say that I object very strongly to these appalling assertions about the people of Yorkshire?

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[Lord Greaves]

As a Yorkshireman living in Lancashire, I sometimes find myself with dual loyalties. However, I can assure my noble friend that it is not Yorkshire as a whole that people blame: it is specifically people from Bradford. As a Bradfordian, I still have dual loyalties there.

Obviously, this Bill is just about metal. However, people steal not just metal but stone. Colne is a stone town and people will come and remove copings from people’s back yards and flagstones. They came to the parish church and raided not just the lead from the roof but took the big stone balls which were on top of the gate pillars outside the church. We are talking about a grade 1 listed building. So it is a huge problem. The most ludicrous example occurred last week. The council had just provided new turf to grass over a rather overgrown area where houses had been pulled down. Some people came, possibly over the border from Yorkshire, rolled up some of the new turf and took it away. It is quite extraordinary what people will do. I am not quite sure whether they wanted it for their cricket pitches in Yorkshire.

It would be out of character if I did not pick up a couple of detailed points. Perhaps the Minister or the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, can answer these points, or they can write to me later if they cannot answer them today. There is a question about the exclusion of residential premises from Schedule 2, which refers to closure notices and closure orders, and exactly what is meant by residential premises. I think that there was very brief discussion of this in the House of Commons Committee on whether, if somebody has a scrapyard and they put a caravan on it and have somebody living there, that counts as residential premises. To what degree would a house surrounded by a big garden have to be used for the purposes of buying and selling scrap metal before it was defined as a scrapyard? There is an issue there which may need resolution.

On the question of inspection and enforcement, I think it is fairly clear that the cost of the licences that people will have to take out under this Bill will be expected to cover a local authority’s administrative costs in running the system. Will they also be expected to cover the additional costs that will inevitably exist for local authorities that take seriously their duties of inspection and enforcement within the system? Inspection and enforcement will in part be the duty of the local police, working with the local authority, but clearly there will be extra work for the local authority. Will it be able to cover those costs from licensing?

The Bill will not solve all our problems. Noble Lords talked about other things that will be necessary, particularly an effective local neighbourhood policing system that can collect together the local knowledge and information that is so often necessary in order to track down people who are doing this—even if they are coming over the border from Yorkshire. However, it is a useful and necessary step forward. It may not be a panacea but it is welcome and I, too, join my noble friend in asking the Government to give guarantees that they will bring the legislation into operation pretty quickly after it has—as we hope—passed through your Lordships’ House.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

I have always been a devolutionist and felt that there had to be a local dimension to most things. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was asking whether people fully understood the social and other implications of what has been happening in this country over recent years. The answer for me is yes. I still have a constituency. It is largely an inner-city constituency in east Belfast. The people at my advice centres are queueing up, looking for help with DLA, housing benefit and how we can get them training, so I am very familiar with all of that. But having elaborate structures today, whether they be in Northern Ireland, in Scotland or anywhere else, is not the whole answer. There is another dimension.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, will be well aware that we have another dimension in Northern Ireland, where we are up against the Republic, which has a very attractive corporation tax rate. At the end of the day, that was attracting more inward investment to that region than anything that any of our industrial development organisations could do.

Local government also has a role to play. There is no model that is absolutely applicable in every part of the UK. I would be very afraid to take a position on the north-east of England, about which a vast array of people seem to be extremely passionate. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, made a powerful speech in respect of what she saw in her region and many other noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Bates and Lord Greaves, spoke on it as well.

[Lord Greaves]

I actually spoke about the north-west and not the north-east, but I will back the north-east as well.

[Lord Empey]

The noble Lord was saying at one stage, if I recall, that part of his region felt that it belonged to the north-east. The point is that there is a large pool of people who feel passionately that the north-east in particular has a critical mass and should have representation. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, attempted to offer regional government to that region and it did not want it at that stage. Otherwise, I dare say, it would have, just as Scotland and London and other places have, its own economic development unit, probably with a Minister working full-time on that area.

The question for us is whether this is going to be solved simply by structures or by a combination of structures and a policy involving close linkages with higher and further education and training. I am not convinced, having established one of these bodies in the past, that the model that we need to go forward for the next 10 or 20 years is necessarily the model that we have adopted in the past. I am not saying that everything that is being proposed by the Secretary of State is the right solution. Local people in those areas would have a better grasp of that than I would have from a distance. But I no longer put my faith in the structures. When you talk to businesspeople, they are very dismissive of bureaucracy. Their real interest is not in any grants that you can offer them; it is whether you have the people on the ground who can do the job. That is the thing that matters most.

There seems to be a new dimension opening up. I do not have all the answers and it is not entirely clear that the Secretary of State for Business has them either. But things have changed dramatically in the past few years, not least because of Europe and what it is now deciding. We have signed up to that. The ability of local organisations to take strategic decisions and effectively to buy in the businesses that come to invest has diminished. We have to be aware of what is happening in the rest of Europe. We feel that people in other parts of Europe do not apply the rules as strictly and rigorously as we do. I am sure that noble Lords from Scotland and elsewhere have had that repeated to them time and again. We play by the rules while others ignore them. That is one source of considerable concern to people in the regions, who feel that we are not necessarily playing on a level pitch.

When one is next door to a region where there is 12.5 per cent corporation tax versus what we have, that is what I call real competition. It is something to which no individual organisation, whether regionally based or otherwise, has a solution on its own. I am for regional solutions but I am no longer putting my faith simply in the structures that we develop. Those structures themselves sometimes get in the way of business; they frustrate businesspeople and, of course, they are very expensive. Whether we have the balance right remains to be seen and I have no doubt that there will be further debate to establish that.

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[Lord Greaves]

I wonder whether the noble Lord—as he says, both of us know the Pennines well—will agree that when a region such as the north-west finally gets a complete set of local enterprise partnerships, or LEPs, whatever pattern it is, what will happen—and it is already being discussed—is that at regional level all the LEPs will come together to form some sort of association or confederation of LEPs to recreate a structure at a regional level. However you look at it, this will be necessary.

[Lord Hoyle]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord. Of course that is what is going to happen. Something is being tossed away needlessly by the Government in a very hasty decision, without due thought being given to either region. I certainly agree with him that these things will need to come together if the various regions throughout the country are to benefit. Unless we do that—unless we get them together—we have failed. I am so sorry that they are being split up in this way, only for them all to come together under another name, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, says. In view of the pleas that have been made from these Benches and from other Benches, particularly from the Benches within the coalition—they seem to sit a little bit apart at times—will the Government please think again before destroying the RDAs?

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[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I take a great deal of comfort from my noble friend Lord Bates, who shares my view of the ability of the north-east to develop common policies where it wishes to do so. There are individual differences between Teeside, Tyneside and Wearside. You would not want to say you were in Newcastle when you were in Washington—I remember somebody getting into terrible trouble for doing so. Locality is very specific and the north-east has different characteristics. It is not homogenous and there are methods of getting economic development in the north-east which do not depend on having a single body to deliver it. A coalition of different bodies with a common policy may well be a much more effective method for doing so.

I gave way to my noble friend when I was talking about the West Country. If I might take Bristol as an example, it is far better for the local partners to develop policies for the specific issues it faces, and for Cornwall to do likewise. I strongly believe that any economies of scale that a regional approach may have are more than outweighed by an absence of local knowledge and commitment and the consequent loss of responsiveness to local circumstances. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who asked why the Gloucester, Swindon and Wiltshire LEP was rejected, I would say that, although there was some business support for the proposal, other businesses in the area felt that a different geographical approach was right. Ministers have gone back and asked the partners to discuss their proposals again in order to develop an approach which takes the full range of local views into account. So the matter is not concluded; it is still under debate, and the Government await evidence on which to make their decision.

[Lord Greaves]

I will give my noble friend a slight rest. Does he not accept that not only are the Government apparently out of step with what most people in the north-east think but their thinking on regionalism is completely out of step with pretty well every other country in Europe of a similar size? It really risks England becoming the most centralised country in the whole of western Europe. While what he says about LEPS and putting the emphasis at a more local level might well be a perfectly acceptable way forward, the real problem is that the LEPs are being deprived of pretty well all the resources which the RDAs and regional bodies have at the moment. Therefore, unless they are lucky enough to get some of this relatively small amount of regional development fund money, they are going to be toothless.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I should remind the noble Lord that I do not consider £1.4 billion in the regional growth fund to be insignificant. Noble Lords may well feel—and they clearly do—that it is better that the taxpayer should fund large redistributions through RDAs, but there may be other ways in which economic policy can be directed, as my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond mentioned. She talked about tax incentives. Far be it for me, as a very lowly member of the Government, to challenge the Treasury on tax incentives, but there are different ways of doing these things other than handing out taxpayers’ largesse. I emphasise that that is the way in which this Government are thinking.

Perhaps if I talk about the north-east, I might be steering into danger. I am not too frightened of doing so because we should recognise that the north-east does not have a single monolithic economy. The region has a varied economic geography, with significant economic poles, across the Rivers Tyne and Wear and the River Tees. Each place has a different industrial heritage and different strengths, opportunities and threats. The local authorities in Tees Valley have a strong track record in working together and were quick to put forward an application to form a local enterprise partnership. This argues that they recognise the benefits of these new arrangements. A partnership has now been established, covering the authorities in the rest of the region. As Vince Cable has made clear, this is not to say that some form of co-operative arrangement across the north-east is not justified if local partners want it. I said that at Second Reading and I have just said it again. However, I strongly question whether a regional development agency, with all its attendant complexity and bureaucracy, is necessary to achieve this.

The previous Government gave RDAs the task of narrowing the gap in growth rates between the prosperous region of the greater south-east and the rest of England, and provided them with significant resources over a sustained period to help them achieve this. However, it was a target that they failed to meet. Between 1990 and 1999, the real gross value added per head in the greater south-east grew by around 1.8 per cent in each year, compared with around 1.4 per cent in the other six regions—a gap of 0.4 of a percentage point. Between 1999 and 2009, annual growth in the greater south-east fell to 1.4 per cent, compared to 0.8 per cent in the other regions—a gap of 0.6 of a percentage point. Therefore, the gap in growth rates has widened by around 0.2 of a percentage point. It is time to try a new policy, even in the north-east.

As the White Paper makes clear, we are encouraging businesses, local authorities and their partners to develop local enterprise partnerships based on real economic areas, rather than artificial administrative regions. The new partnerships are based on where people live and work. Businesses and civic leaders will work together to drive sustainable economic growth and create the conditions for private sector job growth in their communities. Partners have responded to this invitation in an enthusiastic and innovative way. So far, 31 partnerships have been asked to form boards, covering 87 per cent of England’s population and a similar proportion of businesses. We are actively engaged with partners in the remaining areas, helping them to develop proposals that will meet our broad criteria.

I reassure the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, that five LEPs have been asked to establish their bases in areas that cover the east of England. I assure the noble Lord that there will be partnerships covering the entire region. There will be no businesses or parts of the population that are not covered by an LEP.

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[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The skills will be developed as part of the skills policy of the Government. My honourable friend in another place, the Minister, Mr John Hayes, has recently announced a skills strategy for the country. If we have not debated it in this House, it is because we have been very busy debating other things. However, it is a very important strategy, and it is part and parcel of the strategy for economic growth in this country.

Perhaps I may continue to describe the regional growth fund. It is intended to encourage private sector enterprise and create sustainable jobs. In particular, it is designed to help places currently reliant on the public sector to make the transition to private sector-led growth. I suspect that there is a feeling across the House that this is important. Once again we are encouraging proposals to come from the bottom up, responding to local circumstances. When the first round of bidding closed at the end of January, we had received nearly 450 proposals, showing that there is a significant appetite for an approach of this kind. My noble friend Lord Heseltine is chairing the panel which will be selecting the best of these proposals; and noble Lords have referred to my noble friend in contributions to this debate. Noble Lords will need no reminding that encouraging growth throughout the country is a cause dear to his heart.

[Lord Greaves]

I apologise for intervening again. The resources may be significant, as the Minister said, but they are considerably less than the resources available at the moment, either through RDA or through the regional housing pots and all the other resources, which are being either dramatically cut back or scrapped altogether. Is not the problem that many of these places that have put forward good, exciting schemes and want to get ahead will be denied a penny because they will not win the competition that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is presiding over?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I cannot guarantee that all the 450 proposals will find funding. However, I can be sure that the ones for which funding is found will be successful and provide opportunities for the people in those areas.