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Localism Bill

In my maiden speech last May I spoke about the important principle that where services are delivered mainly locally, they should be decided mainly locally, so I strongly welcome the Bill. I was a councillor for 13 years before coming to this place, the last seven of which I was leader of West Sussex county council, so I have seen at first hand the top-down, centralised control from Whitehall that the Labour party exerted. It was determined to treat every part of the country the same from the City of Westminster to the county of West Sussex and from the one end of the country in Cumbria to the other in Cornwall, and its demand for compliance stifled localism and local communities.