Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

That is one possibility. A stronger possibility is that deals will be done without the involvement of the electorate. There is a democratic deficit which the Bill will not solve. The English regions in particular already suffer because they are disadvantaged financially by the Barnett formula. What people really want from the Bill is clear democracy. Let me give two examples. People want to be able to go to their local councillor—in the way in which people have come to me in my capacity as a Member of Parliament and in my capacity as a councillor—and say "We have bad private landlords and we want you, as a council, to regulate them." It has taken nearly 12 years, under a Labour Government, to create a regulatory scheme. That should not have come near Government: it should have been up to local authorities to alleviate people's problems with bad landlords and bad neighbours. Similarly, people are concerned when their buses do not turn up. We have more powers to deal with that than we used to have, but we are still left with a deregulated bus system. Anyone who talks to people in shopping parades or advice bureaux will know that those are two of the immediate problems that regularly arise, and that such people are not particularly interested in finding out how to become a councillor or in the detailed names of the quangos to which the Bill refers. We should be legislating to solve the real problems that I have described.