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Legislative Process

Sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. On Monday, I signed 350 letters and it took me an hour. I have a fast signature. I hope that we will be given some examples of how to overcome the problem of the budget at the end of the year. I am worried that the proposals will cost more than they do now. If people use generic vanity publishing as a method of communication, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South suggested, there will be a lack of the sort of detail that I can provide to constituents now. My other concern is the lack of a level playing field in relation to councillors. My constituency has a Conservative council. Some six weeks before the last election, the leader of the council wrote a letter to everyone on a council estate that was undergoing regeneration attacking my position on the regeneration scheme. I was not allowed to answer those attacks, because that communication would have been unsolicited. It cannot be fair or right that we are subject to more controls than the councillors in our areas.