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Canterbury City Council Bill

I agree with my hon. Friend. Addressing the House during this debate has been a frustrating exercise given that so much relevant material has been produced over the past 18 months. The most recent consultation paper extends to some 89 pages, the Durham university report extended to well over 100 pages, and lots of other material has been produced besides. That tells me that this is an important subject to which we cannot do justice in a Third Reading debate when many of us would like to be able to focus attention on particular amendments or groups of amendments. Having said that, I take a degree of satisfaction from the fact that if we had never started objecting to these Bills and raising these issues in debate, we would never have had the Durham university report commissioned by the Government, the Government's response to that report and preliminary surveys, or the Government's latest consultation, which, I hope, provides a blueprint for the future. I am sure that people will want to contribute representations to that before the closing date. As a result, although we do not have any concessions on Nottingham and Canterbury in relation to clause 5, we have been able to obtain by agreement concessions in relation to two of the other Bills, and concessions forced on two other councils as a result of the actions of the Opposed Bill Committee. Although I cannot find any reason to think that I have made any progress in relation to the Nottingham City Council Bill, I feel that by persuading my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury to introduce an amendment to remove clause 11 from the Canterbury City Council Bill, which I describe as his Bill, we have achieved something, and that the exercise in which we have been engaged has not been completely worthless.