Sustainable Communities Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for that response, particularly support for Battledown brewery and getting Cheltenham SPA into local supermarkets. I shall take him up on that. His comments were instructive in relation to the use of the word ““indicators””. The point is that they should be treated as genuine indicators of the health of a community locally. I appreciate that he is trying not to cause confusion, but I fear that we may be losing the sense of an important part of the Bill. The amendments are important in relation to how consultations are dealt with. In many of the cases that I cited, certainly those relating to local services, there has been a strong sense locally either that consultations have not happened or that they have been granted grudgingly and that the wishes of local people have been ignored—in some cases, such as that of in-patient children’s services at Cheltenham general hospital, spectacularly ignored. If the Bill would still achieve what those who campaigned for it intended—namely, delivering not only consultation but participation—it has my continued enthusiastic support. Participation is not the same as consultation, which can be ignored. We are considering a genuine shift in power to local people that cannot easily be ignored.