Member

The second thing I urge on the back of this, and this will come up in further groups, is that the Government should seriously look at the creation of further town and parish councils, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned. As we get more unitary authorities, the importance of towns and parishes becomes increasingly necessary. I know that the Bill talks about neighbourhood groups and committees and so on, but they are not elected. When you are devolving these sorts of powers and the finances to go with them, it is much clearer and better if you have an elected group of people. We have fantastic towns and parishes across this country and I urge the Government to go further with them and encourage the unitary authorities in the future to use them. There is very little about the role of towns and parishes in this Bill. I think that is wrong and as we go through the Bill, we will be putting much more emphasis on that and much more pressure on the Government to look at it again.