Sustainable Communities Bill

I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for providing that clarification, which will certainly give people in Shipley and Bradford and members of Bradford council a lot of hope and encouragement when this Bill reaches the statute book. I should point out in passing that I support the amendments—the ““cheeky”” amendments, as I think the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) described them—tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) and the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), which would delete the words ““if any”” from new clause 2 and insert ““or recognise”” after ““establish”” in new clause 4. I am sure that we do not want to create a new bureaucracy by establishing new bodies; rather, we should simply be recognising existing ones. I want to touch on the issues raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight), who made a very valuable point. I mentioned earlier my concern about consensus in politics. We appear to have gone down a road whereby people’s ability to exercise free speech on certain subjects is being undermined, and there is no greater example of that at the moment than climate change. People have jumped on to that particular bandwagon with religious zeal, rather than looking at the issue from a purely objective perspective. Of course we all care about the future of our planet and the legacy that we leave our children and grandchildren—nobody doubts the importance of that—but the question is how effective the measures taken are in tackling any problem that there may be. It is no good our trying to do something completely disproportionate that disproportionately affects our economy and the quality of life of the people of this country, with no overall benefit to the world as a whole, anyway. My right hon. Friend touches on an important point. We know that only 2 per cent. of the world’s carbon emissions are emitted from the UK. How much of the world’s carbon emissions are emitted from each of our local areas? A tiny fraction. We all want to encourage people to get involved in things such as recycling and helping the local environment. That is to be welcomed and happens in many of our local communities already. However, as he said, do we really want to encourage people who are motivated not by a belief in environmental issues but by wider anti-capitalist views to charge along with something that they have introduced on the basis of sustainable development, when we all know that the overall impact on global emissions will be tiny and worthless while China churns out new power stations week after week? I hope that people will not use this popular Bill, which will be important for enhancing local accountability, to jump on a bandwagon that will make little difference to global warming and global carbon emissions. The Bill’s purpose, which I strongly support, is to enable local people, in their local community, to have a real say on the decisions that are taken on their behalf. I hope that it will not be used by people in the pursuit of objectives that are not consistent with that purpose, which will allow my local residents to have a greater say in decisions taken in their area.