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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that clarification, but it will not do. It could be an area with one tree on it—or perhaps two trees—that was being sold, and that could be part of a much bigger piece of parkland. In such circumstances, the hon. Lady might like to think about whether this provision might allow development ““bite and hold””, nibbling away a bit at a time. Therefore, I wonder whether the hon. Lady ought to be looking at this matter a little more broadly—although perhaps not as broadly as my more extreme suggestion. There is a problem in that regard. The second provision in the clause is otiose. Why does subsection (1)(b) state,"““which may (but need not) be of particular landscape of historic significance””?" That either is or is not a relevant factor, and if it is neither, it should not be in the Bill, because if it is included, that will simply create money for members of my former profession, who will argue about what those words mean. They are otiose. The hon. Lady either wants this provision included or she does not, but she cannot have it both in and out at the same time, which effectively is what the subsection proposes. To move on, the phrases ““public garden”” and ““purposes of public recreation”” are relatively straightforward, but what exactly does ““a disused burial ground”” mean? Often, large parts of burial grounds are disused while other parts some distance away are used. In that context, let me refer back to my experience on Westminster city council. Most people are aware of the appalling scandal of the Lady Porter regime—one of its first scandals—when it sold three cemeteries for 5p each, and the asset stripping that came with that. Coincidentally, although Westminster city council owned the cemeteries, two of them were situated in the London borough of Barnet—one of them in my constituency, and another in the neighbouring constituency of Finchley and Golders Green. If we are to dispose of such cemeteries, this question arises: who will be consulted as part of a referendum? The relatives of people buried in the cemetery? Westminster council tax payers, who own the cemeteries that are being disposed of? London borough of Barnet residents, where the cemeteries are situated? I would have been happy with any of those options, if they had been in force at the time when Lady Porter decided to sell off the cemeteries.