---

City of Westminster Bill [Lords]

I appreciate my hon. Friend's point about localism, but if we were to take it to the lengths that he seems to be suggesting, we need not bother having a national Parliament. Does he accept that the duty of Members of a national Parliament is to preserve our freedoms and not just to give carte blanche to any local authority to follow an authoritarian route and ban things that it does not like? We have a duty to defend people's freedoms as well as to defend the principle of localism.