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Planning-gain Supplement (Preparations) Bill

It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford). His expertise, as a result of both his ministerial experience and his extracurricular CV, speaks for itself. As I witnessed his well-directed Exocets pounding the target, it made the rest of our contributions seem superfluous. He approached the matter in exactly the right tone, being constructive but also sceptical, and I hope to continue in that spirit. The Minister’s style—the approachable way in which he dealt with questions, and his searching for areas of consensus—also encourages us to look at the matter constructively, and I shall try to do so. However, I agree with the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich that the planning gain supplement—certainly as conceived of by Kate Barker and in the Government consultation—is a seriously bad idea, and there is no point in disguising that. It is a seriously bad idea for several reasons. There are a variety of technical issues, some of which we have heard about, such as the potential impact in terms of complexity and the negative disincentive effects on development. It is also a bad idea because it is potentially centralising. Effectively, the Government will be top-slicing section 106 money. It interposes Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in an area where many local planning authorities have already developed substantial expertise in judging the optimum level of planning gain that they can seek. It sits alongside proposals for the reform of the planning system that will suck out much of the decision-making authority that councils currently have It is a bad idea for another reason, although I suspect that the Conservatives have a different view in this regard, and I do not know the view of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. It detracts from what is potentially a much bigger and more radical approach to the taxation of land. There is a growing view, certainly among liberal, or market, economists, that the right way forward is taxation of land values, as opposed to development betterment. That view is shared by thinking organisations on the centre-left: the Institute for Public Policy Research has produced a very good case. The Government had an opportunity to open up this whole argument. I accept that it is big, radical and complicated in itself, but by focusing on one very narrow aspect of land taxation—and probably the most difficult and unattractive aspect—the Government might well undermine that potentially important development.