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Planning Bill

I agree with my noble friend that the cost of buildings is important because, as we were reminded at four o’clock today, we are about to enter another phase. The projects will be very big; money for them will be extremely short; people will be desperate to get them done; and they will be done cheap. I disagree with my noble friend that design should be there because the commission feels the need for it; design should be there because we feel the need for it. The commission should always be aware of that. I very much go for Amendment No. 17, which pulls the commission rather than pushes it, as the other two amendments do. That is really what ought to be done. The commission ought to know that design is important. Every year it will have to tell us what it has done to ensure that the projects that it has allowed through are beautiful, or striking, or have other aspects of design excellence about them. I do not mind if this turns into a list. A good way of influencing the commission would be for Parliament to say that it regards such matters as important. We might well add the environment to the list. It should not be a long list, but I cannot currently think of anything beyond design and the environment that I would want to add to it. As a way of giving direction to the commission, it would be clean, simple and all-embracing and would avoid a lot of regulation and paperwork that would come if we did this in a different way. If we had a commissioner who was an expert on design, we might get Denys Lasdun again.