I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. My real concern about the Bill is the position of minority interests, be it a minority area such as the ward in my constituency that I mentioned earlier, or a minority community. There are inadequate safeguards in the Bill to prevent such a minority from losing out to a majority who disagree with them. I shall give a concrete example. Let us suppose that—God forbid—the British National party gained control of a council and decided to cancel all English language teaching. That would not necessarily be a national priority, but it could have a significant impact on a minority within that local community. What safeguards are in the Bill to prevent such a thing from happening?
Sustainable Communities Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Andrew Dismore
(Labour)
in the House of Commons on Friday, 19 January 2007.
It occurred during Debate on bills on Sustainable Communities Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
455 c1098-9 
Session
2006-07
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 11:14:07 +0000
URI
http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_371220
In Indexing
http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_371220
In Solr
https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_371220