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Licensing Act 2003

I shall make just a little more progress before giving way. We can talk to all sorts of bodies—the licensing trade, Action with Communities in Rural England, the Musicians Union, the Central Council of Physical Recreation, which is dear to the heart of the Minister for Sport and Tourism, or the Local Government Association—and they will all tell us that the Government are presiding over the biggest chaos in implementation since the last big chaos in Government implementation. Indeed, I was at a dinner in Harrogate only last Tuesday—a mere week ago—when the leader of Westminster city council made a key point in telling me and the others there that it was high time that the Government listened to the issues that were being raised by local authorities about the problems of implementing the Act.