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Canterbury City Council Bill, Leeds City Council Bill, Nottingham City Council Bill and Reading Borough Council Bill

I meant to indicate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that as nobody representing any of the promoters of these Bills had risen to speak, I thought it important that I should do so in order to ask some questions. I hope that the promoters and their representatives will not feel too modest about being prepared to share with a wider public the reasons why they think that their Bills should be revived. The arguments in relation to these four Bills are slightly different from those relating to the two that we discussed earlier—the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill and the Manchester City Council Bill. Although they are all included in one motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will know that one of them, namely the Canterbury City Council Bill, has already received a Second Reading and is therefore, it might be argued, in a category more similar to the other two Bills. On the other hand, one might say that during that previous debate there was unfinished business between my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and me, and that there would be an opportunity to develop the arguments as to why the situation in Canterbury warrants a revival. The difference between the Canterbury Bill and the Manchester and Bournemouth Bills is that the Canterbury Bill has not yet been to the other place and is therefore on a slower time scale than the other two. Therefore, the arguments that were deployed in the previous debate for giving the promoters a chance to rethink their strategy in light of the Durham university report weigh more strongly against the case for Canterbury's revival than in respect of Manchester and Bournemouth. As regards the arguments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) about the relative costs of going back to square one if the promised Government initiatives in the form of legislation or guidance are not forthcoming, those cost penalties will be less in the case of Canterbury because the proceedings have reached a lesser stage than in the case of Manchester and Bournemouth. However, the other three Bills that we are considering have not yet received their Second Reading. When I examined the guidance in relation to the revival of Bills, I found a statement—I think it is in the private Bill procedure—suggesting that if a Bill had not made any progress at all during a Session of Parliament, the House would be reluctant to allow it to be revived in a subsequent Session or carried over from one Session to another. Of course, the Nottingham City Council Bill, the Leeds City Council Bill and the Reading Borough Council Bill did not receive a Second Reading in the last Session, so they are completely de novo and would need a Second Reading in this Session. The question one asks is why, if they did not make any progress in the last Session, they should be allowed to be revived at this stage.