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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

Yes, certainly not to the worm. I shall now move on to subsection (2), and the discussions that we have been having about the issue of referendums and consultation. I mentioned earlier the sale of Westminster city council cemeteries. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston raised another such example. There is a major concern in that, if consultations are not properly done or defined, they can be rigged to produce the desired result. The best recent such example in my constituency was Barnet council’s decision to reopen Partingdale lane—a country lane that had been closed off at one end by the previous Labour administration, in accordance with the residents’ wishes. The council was determined to reopen the lane and had a fake consultation, which the residents challenged successfully through judicial review. A further, much wider consultation took place, which inevitably produced the result that the council wanted, because it was spread so wide that those most directly affected—those who actually lived there—were completely outvoted by those for whom the road might provide rather tenuous potential help with their transport links. So there is a real problem with how we define who should be consulted in a local referendum. I am also concerned about the possibility of referendums serving to undermine, rather than strengthen, local democracy. There is certainly a need for much better and more effective consultation on the part of local authorities, but I question whether referendums are the best way of doing it. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley came up with a whole series of very interesting suggestions, but I should be concerned if such referendums were linked to local government elections or, indeed, any other elections. There is always the risk that a single issue, which might not be fundamental to the governance of the local or wider area, could become dominant, to the extent that the election becomes a single-issue campaign.