Canterbury City Council Bill

I completely take my hon. Friend's point. In fact, my local authority has examined whether it wishes to introduce a private Bill of the kind we are discussing. It has decided not to do so thus far because of the expense and difficulty, but in earlier rounds of debate, the House has discussed the fact that many local authorities that are similarly affected have considered introducing private Bills. That is one reason why other Conservative Members have said in previous versions of this debate that we support the idea of some kind of national approach. Clearly, the matter is not efficiently dealt with by multiple local authorities taking the private Bill route. That is not necessarily the most effective way of dealing with the matter, and some kind of national approach should be seriously considered. That was why we were delighted that the Government produced a consultation document—we are part way through the process at the moment. I am sure the Minister would not expect me to offer a legislative blank cheque: what we do depends first of all on the results of the consultation, and secondly on what proposals this Government or any future Conservative Government make. I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that it is a good thing that the process has been started, because we need to uncover in more detail what people in different parts of the country feel about the matter.