Cornwall (Structural Change) Order 2008

I shall intervene only briefly because I am surrounded by the massed battalions of Cornwall, who will go into some detail on this. Most of the points I wanted to make were covered in our initial debate. When listening to the Minister talking about the consultation process, it struck me that the extent to which one can judge this has been a recurrent theme in these orders. It is an odd thing for someone from my Benches to say, but it strikes me that in future rounds the Government may need to be a little more directive about how councils collect information about public opinion. Perhaps a little more guidance on that would have saved much of the accusation and counter-accusation that we have had. After all, these things do not come cheap. If one has to disregard the outcome because it is not seen as statistically valid, money is spent to no good purpose. I put that forward as a helpful suggestion because on that one occasion I would not make the usual cry about too much central direction. It would be needed.