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Housing (Hertfordshire)

As the hon. Gentleman spoke, I could hear the sounds of an elephant trap being constructed for me, and I shall not on this occasion blunder into it. I believe that Kate Barker is a very effective analyst of many of the problems in the planning system, but I disagree with her prescriptions for some of the things that she thinks we should do. I have raised those in a previous debate, and am happy to discuss them outside this Chamber. One key point that the Government should acknowledge is that the whole plan-making process is uniquely centralised, and while the citizens and residents of Hertfordshire must live with those decisions, the power rests with the Secretary of State. The Government tend to blame local authorities and Conservative MPs as though the power rested in their hands, but Kate Barker says:"““England has a highly centralised system of land use regulation. There is extensive national policy on issues ranging from density levels to greenfield land targets. Plan-making processes and content are heavily regulated. The Secretary of State also has broad powers to make decisions on planning applications.?" Responsibility rests centrally, and it rests heavily on the Minister to ensure that environmental and qualify-of-life considerations weigh with other social and economic factors. My hon. Friends have made a series of points to draw attention to the way in which Hertfordshire is suffering environmentally, and those considerations need to be rapidly brought back into balance. I said that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford used to be a chartered surveyor, but I suspect that he missed his true profession. Having listened to him setting out the sorry tale of contact between the Minister for Housing and Planning, the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), I have concluded that he should really have been a prosecuting barrister. I, and the whole House, would be very interested to hear the Minister’s explanation of what seems to the Opposition to be a prima facie breach of good practice—or, in the terms used by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans, a stitch-up. Can she unstitch that now?