Planning Bill

My hon. Friend has made my point for me. It is not difficult to work out that, at every stage of the process, there will be a judicial review challenge. It is a sadness for me that we in this House are working towards passing a Bill in which the flaws are apparent whenever we make a new point. I wish that Ministers would take that on board, because none of us wants big infrastructure decisions stuck in the system in the way that they have been for the past 10 years in particular. The Secretary of State and the Minister for Local Government, who dealt with this in Committee, have made a great deal of the consultation that should be undertaken by applicants for development. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe has obtained an agreement, to which I have no objection, that local authorities will oversee the consultation, but that does not go far enough. Any applicant for any development—we are discussing infrastructure in the context of this Bill—should have not only consulted but resolved as many as issues as possible before submitting the application. If the hon. Gentleman thinks back, he will realise that I made that point, which is one of the ways to speed up the system, in Committee. Many of the objections to a planning application can be resolved before they even go to inquiry. These days, the duty to consult is regarded with the deepest scepticism by the people who should participate in the consultation, largely because of the top-down planning system that the Government have imposed through housing targets. People respond to consultations in good faith, but—this is true of a planning application that I have seen in the past 10 days—the decision by the Planning Inspectorate is entirely based on the particular district council not meeting its housing targets. That decision had nothing to do with the merit of the appeal or the views of local people; it was made just because the top-down housing targets had not been met. I am sorry, but consultation is now a dirty word among people who are trying to participate in the development of their communities. We have to go further than that, and I am sorry that this draconian Government do not wish to do so.