Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

Briefly, the only local authority of which I have ever been a member is a parish council. I was a chairman of a parish council in Warwickshire—we were just about big enough to have a council, as distinct from a mere parish meeting—and it did some quite useful work. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would no doubt prefer Amendment 43 to follow list A rather than list B, but I thought that a parish meeting was excluded—I may be wrong; I am sure the Minister will respond if I am—because it has no separate existence from the electors, unlike any other local authority body. It is not democratically elected. It is not direct democracy—the phrase that the noble Lord used—because it has no separate existence. That is probably why it is not there.