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Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [Lords]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) for what he said. The Bournemouth and Manchester Bills will get their Third Readings, and will then go to the other place. I hope that those in the other place will find time for the technical consideration of the large number of amendments we have passed today, in addition to the amendment made to clause 5 by the Opposed Private Bill Committee. I remain concerned about some of the detail in clause 5. I made comments about it, and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) was supportive of those concerns last Thursday. Those comments remain valid, and I will have to see what happens in practice. Obviously, the amendments reflecting those concerns were voted down, and my amendment 74, which would have incorporated the best parts of the Reading Borough Council Bill and the Leeds City Council Bill, albeit modified slightly, was not acceptable to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East, to the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd), or to their respective councils. I cannot do anything about that; all I can do is argue from a position of numerical weakness, but I have the arguments on my side. We have reached a compromise.