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London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. Obviously, the Bill started off four or five years ago, long before anybody dreamt that a general power of competence would be given to local authorities under a major Act of Parliament. In the days when I was a local government Minister, central Government was absolutely dead against giving local authorities a general power of competence. Local authorities have won that argument, and now it is open to them, using their imagination, to see to what ends they can use that general power. In my view, though, it is much better to use it to introduce arrangements suited to a particular locality where the people introducing the arrangements will be accountable, at the ballot box, to the electorate, than to introduce proposals in the way that the Bill's promoters are seeking to do.