Greater London Authority Bill

I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that that is absolutely implicit in the planning regime that applies to every local authority in the country, so unless he is proposing that local authorities should not be able to grant planning permission because their decisions are not subject to appeal, there is an inconsistency in his argument. All that is being proposed is an extension to the Mayor of the same power that can be exercised by an individual local authority when it considers a planning application. That change is to ensure that the Mayor has the ability to direct acceptance as well as refusal. I wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman about transparency, however, and I also wish to stress something that I said earlier: such a power of acceptance must be used in only a very limited number of strategic cases where it is clearly right that the decision be taken at the London-wide level, rather than a local level.