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Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, it may surprise the noble Lord to know that I have that precedent here and I do not believe that it supports his case at all. The West Northamptonshire Development Corporation (Area and Constitution) Order 2004 was laid before Parliament on 13 May 2004. The order was not referred to a Select Committee until 7 September because of the processes that had to be gone through. The committee began its consideration on 25 October. It sat for seven days, visited Northamptonshire on 3 November, announced its decision on 4 November and published its recommendations on 17 November. By my calculations, the time between the order being laid and the final process having been gone through is precisely six months and four days, which supports the point that I made earlier. He is referring simply to the time for which the committee itself sat, but that is only a small proportion of the total time involved in going through the hybridity requirements laid down by the procedures of the House.