My Lords, just as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was quite right to emphasise the importance of the functions that are attached to a particular terminology—I do not dissent from his argument at all—it is also important to recognise that we are dealing with a watchdog here, something that the Minister has herself made plain. We are debating what the responsibilities of that watchdog should be and on whose behalf it should be working. I am convinced that I will go to my grave saying that one of the things that has gone wrong in the public perception of successive Governments is that in road policy you can somehow separate out the interests of drivers and passengers
from the interests of the communities through which they are driving. Of course, when the planners have had their say and so on, the road will be built. One of the things the watchdog can do is say, “Hang on a moment. What is happening to the people who live here as distinct from the people who will drive through?”. I think that that is an imaginative concept which we need to take hold of, and there is an opportunity in this new legislation to acknowledge the interests that go wider than just those of drivers and passengers. I have a concept of cohesive society and community, not of the interests of one group of people prevailing willy-nilly over the interests of another group.