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Housing and Regeneration Bill

Perhaps I may make a suggestion to my noble friend. We are going down a route that may not lead us to a very sensible place. The amendment flies in the face of current practice. It is not unusual for a public agency to put out a development brief on land that does not have planning consent and explicitly expect the developer then, in meeting that development brief, to take account of the planning risk in the price. I go back to what I said earlier: it is really important that, in writing to the noble Lord and the Committee, we should also take account of absolute current practice and past practice because we might inadvertently be causing a real problem in terms of where we get to. I urge my noble friend to do that.