Greater London Authority Bill

Indeed. The fact is that these arrangements have been around for a long time, as have the discussions about them. Of course there is a legitimate argument for ensuring that there is a community benefit from any development. In the case of large-scale developments, some of that will relate to matters that could be characterised as strategic. However, other elements of the planning gain have always been recognised—we might as well be honest about this—as being something put back into the local community to make a development acceptable, when without it, it might not be acceptable. There is an element of trade-off involved, as there frequently is in planning matters. The fact that the community can get something back from a development is sometimes important in ensuring that the development is accepted and can be linked effectively in with the community. Even years ago, such arrangements were hinting at a move towards what would be known in modern parlance as a more sustainable form of community. It is hugely important that the local community in which a development takes place has the assurance that it will get some of the planning gain back, however it is characterised. Effectively regionalising the planning gain by passing it over to the Mayor is not the way to do that. The only thing that would be worse is the idea, which has sometimes been floated, of establishing a national planning gain supplement, so that the Treasury could nationalise it and take it over. I am sure that the Minister would not be privy to the thinking of Treasury Ministers on that matter, but such a proposal would be of even greater concern to us. I do not want to set a precedent in London for such a move by enabling the Mayor to seize all the planning gain. It might be argued that because of their strategic size, some developments will have implications for strategic infrastructure, in which the Mayor has an interest. I accept that, but the present procedures already enable Transport for London, for example, to be a statutory consultee in relation to such projects. TFL has every reason, and every ability, to get its demands heard in such negotiations. I do not have a problem with the Mayor and his agencies taking part in the negotiations on what happens to the planning gain. I object, however, to their being the owners of the planning gain in such cases. I would far rather have the process driven by the boroughs, for the local people, and the Mayor could negotiate the arrangements and get out a chunk of what he wanted. That would be more in accordance with our localist tradition, and much more likely to command support. The thought that a large-scale development could be imposed on a community against its will by the Mayor and that all the planning gain could then be taken by the Mayor, and spent not in that borough at all but somewhere else, is hardly likely to engender confidence in the planning system in London. It is potentially another one of those perverse incentives that were referred to earlier in the debate, whereby loosely drafted legislation can have damaging consequences that were not foreseen.