Sustainable Communities Bill

My right hon. Friend goes to the heart of the issue. He is right. Local authorities often wish to empire-build, as we saw in the debate on district councils and unitary authorities. Often, the bigger council wants a unitary authority because it would have more power, and it has difficulty handing powers down. My next point concerns the role of the Secretary of State. It is always Opposition parties that want Governments to give up power, but when those parties get into government, they often forget that and think it essential that they hold on to those powers because they will use them better than the previous Government. The Bill invests an awful lot of power in the Secretary of State, and contains no guarantee that local authorities will get more power from the Government or that local people will have more say. To a certain extent, it is at the whim of the Secretary of State whether that is allowed to happen. I have great respect for the Minister, and I believe I speak for the whole House when I say that. I have no doubt that he would be prepared to give more powers to local people, but we are still at the whim of any—