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Parish Councils (Planning)

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn that he has just provided a synopsis of what I intend to say today. Those issues are very much the concern of many parish councillors. When I visit the parish councillors in my constituency, not only on my summer tour but all year round, I know that they will be able to point to the issues in their community that I need to take up on their behalf. They will know about the road problems, for example, some of which they might have been wrestling with for a long time. They will know about the lack of affordable housing, and about how the problem could be rectified. They will have talked to the children and young people in their community, and will know about the lack of recreational facilities. They will also know about the lack of public transport. That is a particular problem in my Somerset constituency, where the bus timetables sometimes show one bus per week rather than an hourly or more frequent service. The parish councillors will know what a restricting effect that can have on people without their own transport, especially younger people who do not have the capacity to drive and who might not have the opportunity to be driven everywhere by their parents. What are the concerns that I hear about the role of parish councils? Picking up on the point made by the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham), one of the concerns is a general feeling that there has been a significant increase in the regulation through the code of conduct and through the Standards Board, and that some of that is not relevant to the role and responsibilities of a parish council. I do not entirely accept that argument. I recognise that there are standards that we should expect parish councillors, like any other elected members, to uphold, but there is a point beyond which it is unhelpful and counterproductive to require constant reiteration of those standards. My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk pointed out the lack of competition for places. The fact that so few parish councils have competitive elections is a significant worry. I do not know what the answer is. I do know that not only does it sometimes cause considerable concern to councils that do not have the requisite number of councillors the day after polling day because not enough people put themselves forward, but it calls into question their identity as councillors—the respect with which they should be treated if they are not genuinely the product of a democratic process, other than nomination. We should be concerned about that.