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Planning Bill

I am grateful to the Minister. He has dealt with these issues fairly extensively and, at this hour of the night, I shall not reply in great detail. I accept his point about trying to get all local authorities dealing with a particular application to agree. Having been a member of a local authority, I am all too aware of the difficulties of local authority co-operation. It is very easy to say it, but it is not as easy to achieve. I was pleased by what the Minister said about the work that had already been done on devolution of schemes to local highways authorities. I appreciate also that when one starts improving a road such as the A1, which I occasionally use, while the individual schemes may be small, their impact is of major significance if you start to bang them together. The A1 is one of the major trunk routes in the country that still needs considerable improvement. The Minister has been very helpful and we will study his reply in detail. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.