Localism Bill

As a former leader of the council—and obviously a councillor—of the great city of Bradford, I welcome this Bill. I have some reservations and I am sure that as time goes by we can thrash out some of those issues, but my local council will no longer have to doff its cap to a regional development agency to ask for its own money. My local council will not have to argue about ridiculous housing figures or argue the toss about child pregnancy figures when every professional said they were unachievable and primary care trust chairs and directors had to intervene on the Government to explain the ridiculous targets that had been set. There was paper-chasing, whole departments had to be established to facilitate inspectorates, initiatives came through where one-off moneys were chased and a few days' notice was given to bid for millions of pounds. Such ridiculous initiatives—