My hon. Friend makes a very sound point, of which we should all be wary. We need to break that system so that we are able to go with the begging bowl and say, “We can prove we need a little bit more than anyone else,” and take as much control as possible of our own areas and resources. The amendments I have tabled seek to achieve that. The localities need their own tax base and powers. Those powers also need to be entrenched so that they cannot be sucked back by any Government—by that black hole of magnetic force we call Whitehall—unless they are able to demonstrate that their stance can be defended constitutionally, as explained in a couple of my amendments.
We need not be afraid. As well as the tremendous example of what has happened in Scotland, we have the example of what happens in every other western democracy. People in western Europe and north America take as given the independence of their locality, state, region or länder from the centre. They cannot be told what to do. The idea that the President of the United States could tell the states of New York and Georgia how they should spend their money is laughable, as is the idea that all the money in individual areas in Germany, Italy and Scandinavia should go to the centre and then be redistributed. They would think we were crazy if we proposed that system for them, yet that is the system we operate for ourselves. We are the oddities—we are the odd ones out.
We need to mature as a democracy. Sometimes I think our democracy is a bit frail and feeble, but actually it is underpowered: we do not have enough of what other nations in the western world have and we are unable to take steps forward. That is why I welcome the Bill in general, but I want to propose a number of other steps for the Minister to take either now or, perhaps more realistically, in the next devolution Bill.