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Planning Bill

I am sorry, but I was trying to discover where we were. The solution is that the Chamber did not give my noble friend leave to withdraw his amendment, which we are still discussing. I wish to comment on the interesting point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold. As Secretary of State, I was heavily involved with this issue and I published proposals for planning authorities, when drawing the boundaries of green belts around small towns and villages, to leave enough space for the kind of natural development to which the noble Lord referred. I was immediately howled down by all the environmental interests: they said that I was proposing to cover the green belt in concrete. That was complete nonsense, although the matter is of course sensitive. However, I am sure that I was right and it is wrong to draw a line that follows the existing houses all the way around a village and to state that everything outside it is the green belt, subject to all the extra restrictions. That is nonsense and I hope that the Government will recognise, in continuing to administer green belt policy, that natural development should be allowed. My chief official used to say that the man who gets the last house at the end of the road at the edge of the green belt becomes the secretary of the local conservation society.