---

Legislative Process

If I may say so, with all due respect to parliamentary language, the hon. Gentleman’s last comment was nonsense. Let us leave aside the matter of the discretion of local authorities and whether it has increased or decreased over the last 50 years. I suspect that, in fact, it has increased on planning matters. Local authorities still have considerable discretion and power. If I wanted to, I could detain the House with details of the longest-running constituency case—it has been going on for seven years—that I have ever had to deal with. It involves the planning authority, and although I generally have the highest regard for colleagues in the local authority, on this particular matter, there has been a level of maladministration. It has been my duty to represent a particular family and a wider community—[Interruption.] That is not posturing; it is my duty to do so.