Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My hon. Friend anticipates the point I am about to make. As a result of the last local elections, 327 out of the 645 Greater Manchester councillors are Labour, 131 or 20 per cent. are Conservative and 162 or 25 per cent. are Liberal Democrats. Yet the Greater Manchester PTA is about to be taken over by the Liberal Democrats, even though they account for only 25 per cent. of councillors. That cannot be right. It will seriously undermine the ability of Greater Manchester PTA to work with the 10 districts to produce passenger transport arrangements that reflect not only the will of the councils, but the will of those who voted in May. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to examine whether, when the Bill moves on to the House of Lords, he might amend it so that the Liberals cannot subvert the democratic will of the people of Greater Manchester in this way and so that we can have the progress that was agreed between the other two major parties in Greater Manchester in respect of what are essential transport measures. They should be included in our local area agreements so that we can have our busways, tramways and congestion charges, for which the vast majority of the people of Greater Manchester have voted. If we do not have them, the point of the elections will be lost. At some point in the future we should also look into proportionality. I favour there being a strict basis for that so that one in three councillors must be an opposition member even if one party has as much as 60, 70 or 80 per cent. of councillors. One third of representation should come from the opposition party, rather than the smaller proportion that it currently has. Perhaps we should take an overall look at proportionality. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will look into this issue closely and make sure that we are not put into the position that we appear to be about to be put into even though five of the Greater Manchester councils are Labour controlled, one is Conservative and only two are under Liberal Democrat control.