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Planning and Energy Bill

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention. Few Members of this House have delved deeper into the interstices of its procedures than he has, and I entirely take his point. I was not just being polite when I made those comments, because I think the Bill was improved in Committee. It could have been improved even more, but we are all capable of greater improvement. Certain aspects of the Bill slightly confuse, and possibly concern, me. One is the issue of the permissive versus the mandatory. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) has deliberately included words such as ““may”” and ““reasonable””. People whose will is good will react to those words in a positive way and will seek to match the requirements and aims of the Bill. In the same way, the Mayor of London wishes to have a no-alcohol policy on the tube that will be self-policing. One can rely on the good nature of human beings, but what concerns me is that there are people who will always seek ways around such measures. I have mentioned former local government planning officers, who seem to work as consultants nowadays. Many of them will be as busy as Jimmy Bullard, as we say in west London, trying to find their way around words such as ““reasonable”” and around the permissive nature of ““may””. I can understand that the hon. Gentleman is on the side of the angels. Nobody will ever argue for energy-inefficient buildings or against energy-efficient and locally-sourced materials—I sincerely hope that they would not do so. However, in a commercial world, there will always be people who seek to respond to the squeezing of margins by a reduction in standards. I am concerned that when an expression such as a ““reasonable”” standard is used, one opens the door to an unreasonable action by a commercial builder who understandably seeks to maximise profit. I see a terrible vision ahead; I see people in the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol sitting there day after day trying to analyse, much as medieval theologians calculating the amount of angels dancing on the head of a pin, exactly how reasonable is ““reasonable””. Being, if I may say so, a reasonable person myself, I have looked beyond that point and tried to see how the provision could be more tightly detailed. The hon. Gentleman said that one cannot have a completely comprehensive list. That is where new clause 1 comes in, because it details the insulation implications and consequences. Amendment No. 11 implies that the insulation standards would be delineated, and if those provisions were accepted, the Bill would be considerably toughened up. If, by our accepting them, the Bill was not jerry-builder-proofed, we would have gone some way towards reducing any amount of conflict later. The key point in new clause 1 is its emphasis on insulation. Making provision for energy use and energy efficiency in local plans is obviously the first step, and it is one that will be supported by the hon. Gentleman and the Government, and, I hope, by all men and women of good will. However, that is only half the battle, because even if there is energy-efficient construction, there will still be a need for insulation and perhaps for additional insulation in areas that we have not even gone into before. Perhaps new materials will soon become available that will provide an even greater degree of energy efficiency through insulation, so we need to include the insulation component. Until recently, the fibres used in loft insulation were not only non-biodegradable, but appallingly sourced and of high energy cost. They may have saved heat loss, but they did so at an enormous cost in the production side of the equation.