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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I shall develop later in my remarks. The Edgware hospital site is actually on the frontier of my constituency, and of the London borough of Barnet with the London borough of Harrow. People on the Harrow side—and the Brent side, which is a little further south—would have had a large say in whether the hospital should be redeveloped as it has been, to create the brand new community hospital. Under the phraseology in the Bill, they would have been excluded from that decision-making process. Therefore my hon. Friend makes an important point, and I shall later give a few further examples of the possible impact of it. I have concerns about the disposal of land by other bodies. We have mentioned the MOD and the NHS, but there are many other public authorities that perhaps ought to have been caught—especially as, if the disposal is being done by central Government, that is far more democratically remote than if it is done by a local authority. Even if the Bill is not enacted, if a decision is made to dispose of land, the local authority can, in theory at least, be voted out by the local people, whereas the decision-making processes at national level are far more remote. Although individual Members might jump up and down about particular disposals, they will obviously be relatively less influential than members of local authorities at local level. In that context, the point is stronger. Clause 1(1)(a) refers to"““an area of scattered mature…trees””." I am concerned that there is no definition of how big that area is. Is it the whole county? If we were to look at any county, we would probably find that there are"““scattered mature…trees overlying pasture or arable land””" dotted around it. There is no definition of how dense that scattering may be. In fact, ““scattering”” implies the opposite of dense; it implies a less dense spread of trees than the hon. Member for Solihull might wish.