HC Deb 11 November 1975 vol 899 cc1228-30

Lords Amendment: No. 38, in page 13, line 32, at end insert: (4A) As soon as practicable after the making of any arrangements under subsection (4) above for the discharge of any functions of the Authority by a local authority the local authority shall—

  1. (a)send a copy of the arrangements to every other local authority within whose area the functions are to be so discharged, and
  2. (b)deposit a copy of the arrangements at their principal office and keep it available there at all reasonable hours for public inspection without payment."

The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Alec Jones)

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

The amendment arises from one in Committee in the other place by Lord Sandford and Lord Aberdare. Their amendment was unsatisfactory in that it provided only for information to be sent by district councils to county councils and not from county councils to district councils. It only required county councils to make information publicly available. It was also suggested that possibly district councils should also make relevant agency arrangements available for inspection.

The Government are in favour of this type of publicity and openness. They had proposed to achieve this for these agency arrangements by requiring the Land Authority itself to keep and make available for inspection a register of agency arrangements into which it had entered. The Opposition criticised this as being remote and less favourable to the Welsh public than the corresponding arrangements in England in relation to land acquisition and management schemes.

The Government introduced their own amendment on Report, when it was approved. It requires each tier of local authority to give publicity to the agency arrangements into which it has entered, and is thus more useful than the Opposition proposal would have been.

Mr. Wyn Roberts

We approve of the amendment. It is obviously very important that the left hand should know what the right hand is doing in this matter, but I must confess to being a little surprised that the actual duty of informing each local authority lies upon the local authority itself, rather than upon the Land Authority for Wales, which will presumably have been the initiator of whatever arrangements are made with the district or the county authority. I should be grateful if the Minister would explain why the duty lies with the local authorities as opposed to the Land Authority itself.

Secondly, I should like the Minister to comment on the publicity aspect of this. According to the amendment as it stands there is no duty upon the authorities to give publicity as such. They are required only to let each authority know of the arrangements. There is no duty laid upon them that they shall inform the public that these arrangements have been made.

There is a great deal of concern in Wales about these agency arrangements, and I am sure that the public—and, indeed, the local authorities themselves—would like to know the Government's latest thinking on these arrangements.

Mr. Alec Jones

The amendment was drawn up in response to the proposal produced in the other place by Lord Sandford and Lord Aberdare. It was then felt that, since the matter of agency arrangements was chiefly a question of administrative arrangements to operate the scheme, this was principally a matter of concern both to the district and to the county councils. Since we require that the Land Authority shall work in the fullest co-operation with district and county councils, it was felt that this could best be done by having the responsibility of notifying the agency arrangements arranged in this way.

As to making extra publicity, the point we are making in the amendment is that the fact of having the arrangements available at local authority offices will extend the opportunities for local people to become as fully aware of these agency arrangements as they may care to make themselves.

Question put and agreed to.

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