Planning Bill

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my interests on the Register. My law firm carries out considerable planning work, in which I am sometimes involved. The inspector at the terminal 5 inquiry—a most distinguished barrister, Roy Vandermeer QC—really had his work cut out. The local plan was years and years out of date. The then Government had not produced proper traffic forecasts. All those things had to be sorted out by the inspector. That was not his fault. There were no national policy statements and that led to the problem.