London Local Authorities Bill [Lords] (By Order)

It is a great pleasure to participate in this debate. If some of us had not objected to the Bill going through on the nod on Second Reading, we would not be having this useful debate. We would not have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer)explain why he thinks the Bill is a good one, nor would we have heard the Minister say what he thinks all the Bill's shortcomings are. He suggested that clauses 11 to 22 inclusive should be deleted, because he does not support them, and that clause 23 is redundant. It is useful to get that on the record. This has also been a useful debate because we have been able to welcome the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), who made his maiden speech from the Opposition Front Bench. It must be approaching a record to be able to speak from the Front Bench so soon after being first elected. I congratulate him on that, and I listened with interest to some of the things that he said. I cannot accuse him of saying something inconsistent with what happened under the previous Government, which is one of the strengths of being a completely new Member with a shadow ministerial office. I have a number of concerns about the Bill. Many of them centre around the principle of whether we need to regulate more and whether we need to do so proportionately, and the need to ensure that we listen to groups of people— sometimes quite small groups of people—who are potentially adversely affected or treated unfairly as a result of private Bills. That is why it is so important that such Bills should be considered carefully in Committee, as I am sure this Bill will be in Opposed Private Bill Committee. The Bill is already the subject of petitions against it, some of which I referred to in my interventions on my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green. I shall begin by dealing with the concerns of the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association.