Greater London Authority Bill

I welcome the Bill and shall confine my comments to its housing and planning aspects. When my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning opened the debate, she was right to say that the aim of the Bill is to give strategic responsibility for housing and planning to a democratically elected London-wide government. However, Members on both sides of the House are also right to raise concerns about the possibility of over-interference by the mayoralty in local matters. I can best illustrate that by giving the example of a local case that I dealt with in my constituency. It relates to an area universally known as the Allied Carpets site, which is on a busy junction but in a residential area of Shepherd’s Bush, overlooking a prominent park. A 10-storey block of flats was deemed suitable by a developer, although not by the then Labour-controlled local council, in what had previously been a purely residential area where buildings did not rise more than three storeys. At some point the Greater London authority expressed the view that the development was suitable, very much in line with the idea, which may be on the wane, that the higher the better. I have no prejudice against tall buildings but to put what was, in essence, a tower block in an area of Victorian streets was deemed inappropriate, particularly by everybody who lived in the area. We all make mistakes, however, and I took comfort from the fact that the GLA chose not to appear at the planning inquiry and, indeed, seemed to withdraw. The planning inspector, faced by persuasive arguments from me and local Labour councillors and residents, turned down the appeal. The case illustrates not whether the GLA was right or wrong, but that we need clear guidelines, which relates to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) referred to as mission creep. We need clear guidelines so that when matters are genuinely local there is no interference from the GLA. The case I described was a perfect example of that; the development was important for the locality but by no stretch of the imagination was it strategic for London.