Localism Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for her comments. I am most grateful for the support that I got from all sides of the House. I would like to answer the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, straight away. First, I am not creating a new offence as such. All I am trying to do is to make the 1990 Act, which has failed for the reasons we have discussed, work better. How many prosecutions there have been or how many there will be is completely unknowable. I suppose we could know how many there have been, but the point is that at the moment the thing cannot be enforced. In my book, unenforceable law is bad law. You should not have laws which put obligations and requirements which cannot be, and therefore are not, enforced. That is the way to bring the law into contempt.