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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

I fully accept that. There may be cases where we just have to hold a referendum and the cost has to be borne, and that is that—although we can be more imaginative these days, because we seem to be holding elections all the time. We are all in favour of democracy, but there is such a thing as electoral fatigue, and in some cases we may be reaching that. There are all sorts of elections, ranging from the London assembly elections to the European elections—even to general elections. I do not think that the public are so thick that they cannot manage to vote on national issues in a general election and on other issues as well. California is famous for that. They have what they call propositions, which are put on the ballot paper. Some are put on by the public themselves by signing petitions, so that control is taken out of the hands of local authorities or Government. The people themselves say ““Hold on; we want to vote on this””, and if we believe in democracy, as we do, we can do that. We could even stretch that a bit further and conduct experiments in online voting, which would also greatly reduce the cost. So let us be imaginative.