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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

: I am delighted to be called to respond to the debate, which I do not intend to delay. A good point was raised about parish councils and unitary councils and I can see the merit in that argument. I certainly do not want untoward burdens to be placed on that tier of local government. Nevertheless, I know that there is a great deal of support for measures to tackle the problems of climate change at the lowest level of local government. I have received numerous letters from people involved in parish councils who want us to be more robust in giving clear direction to local government at all levels. Let me come back to the point that I made in my opening speech about the survey of 300 local authorities, to which 92 per cent. responded. The authorities thought—Conservative Members have said this—that the issues covered by the measure fell under the remit of existing provisions on the statute book that provided powers to tackle climate change, but that the reason why they were not being prioritised—