Yes, I think we should seriously consider that.
The Secretary of State seems to accept the need for some rebalancing between councils and the Planning Inspectorate. The policy paper published with the Bill proposes to remove the requirement for authorities to have a rolling five-year land supply for housing, where their plan is up to date. That could be helpful, but it is impossible to say without more detail. The proposal is not in the Bill and even if implemented, it probably would not apply to areas already in the process of updating their new plan. So any impact probably would not be felt for several years, by which time many greenfield sites could have been lost.
I therefore appeal to Ministers to seize the opportunity presented in this Bill to restore the powers of locally elected councillors to determine what is built in their neighbourhood, by scrapping the mandatory housing targets which have been undermining those powers. We must stop these targets, and the five-year land supply obligations they impose, from being used as a weapon by predatory developers to inflict overdevelopment on unwilling communities. Once they go under the bulldozer, our green fields are lost forever. Once suburban areas such as Chipping Barnet are built over by high-rise blocks of flats, their character is profoundly changed forever. Please let this Government not be the ones who permanently blight our environment with overdevelopment. Please let us amend and strengthen the Bill so that we clip the wings of an overmighty Planning Inspectorate, restore the primacy of local decision making in planning and safeguard the places in which our constituents live.
3.31 pm