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Localism Bill

I shall comment on a couple of amendments, but, starting with amendment 15 and following the remarks of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) on the Standards Board, I was a councillor for six years, from 2004 to 2010, and once during that time I was taken to the Standards Board but found not really to have done anything wrong. The local authority dealt with the matter internally, but the person who brought it did not like the decision and tried to take it to appeal, and that is the point: it was about a planning issue. Councillors stood in the ward I represented in Leeds on manifestos saying that they would protect certain characteristics of villages, and, when a planning application was made that totally undermined that, they wrote a letter of objection. The person who made the planning application took them to the Standards Board, saying that they were making a prejudicial complaint. That person used the board as a bullying tactic against councillors, and it happened time and again. Nobody in this Chamber would say that people should not expect anything except the highest standards from those in public office. Everybody across the Chamber agrees with that, but the provisions brought in by the Standards Board were taken up by members of the public. Those people wanted to force the issue with a councillor, and they did not just make their life a misery; they cost them, personally and financially, a fortune.