Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [Lords]

Exactly; my hon. Friend is absolutely right. If I did not think that the compromise were right, I would not have accepted it. Once at the stage of forcing negotiation, it would be a foolish person who turned away from achieving a successful outcome, which is what we have achieved over the past few hours. I hope that the passage of the Bill deals with the consequences about which I was fearful: an adverse impact on the borough of Christchurch caused by a move of the "problem" from Bournemouth. I hope that the assurances of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East that that will not happen prove correct in practice, and that the burghers of Bournemouth think that they have had good value for money in investing in this exercise. I know that the process has been long and probably expensive for them, but I will not comment any further on that. As my hon. Friend rightly said, until we get a national framework there will be a dilemma for councils as to whether they wish to spend scarce council tax payers' resources on such an exercise or whether they believe that the problem is not worth the cost of the remedy. That is the view that a lot of councils are taking. The councils in question have not taken that view, and one must respect them for that. I support Third Reading and hope that the Bill reaches the statute book before the election, although of course it could have been carried over beyond the election under the private Bill procedure. I am not sure that everybody in Bournemouth understood that. Indeed, there was a bit in the local paper last week suggesting that I had talked out the Bill, but I could not do that under private Bill procedure. There was a three-hour slot and it came to an end. I happened to be on my feet at the end, but I was not talking it out. In that respect it is a very different procedure, as you and my hon. Friend know, Madam Deputy Speaker—