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Manchester City Council Bill [Lords] (By Order)

I tried to make my case clear to my hon. Friend in the interventions during the previous debate, but I shall make my Bournemouth-specific points when we discuss the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill in particular. At the moment, I wish to deal with the more general issues that relate to all six Bills. When we talked in the previous debate about seeing whether we needed national legislation, the Minister kindly said that he would organise that research. He was working with the grain of the mood of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) argued from the Opposition Front Bench in favour of national legislation to deal with the problem. He said that if we dealt with it one council at a time,"““we could be merely transporting the problem to a neighbouring council.””" The hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd), who spoke to support the Manchester City Council Bill, said:"““The most sensible way forward is to have a national framework.””—[Official Report, 12 June 2008; Vol. 477, c. 524.]" That was supported from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), as well as by my hon. Friends the Members for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) and for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). I believe that the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East, whom I am pleased to see in his place, also supports the case for a national framework. So, in setting up this research project and asking for the work to be done by Durham university, the Minister was responding to a strong request.