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Planning Bill

My Lords, I am delighted to be a cosignatory to the amendment and to be able to indicate, very briefly, some support from this side of the House. I am not sure whether the Minister seeks to emulate the feats of Palmerston or sees herself as a latter-day Palmerston this afternoon, but I believe that there is an additional reason to those already expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, and the noble Baroness. It is that there is a general increase in interest, concern and anxiety about the quality of design in our country. It is a public issue in a way that it has not been for several decades. I shall take two examples that demonstrate this. First, just recently the RIBA published the Stirling Prize. Considerable publicity was given to it, which generated a lot of genuine debate about the quality of 21st-century design. Secondly, there is the Channel 4 programme ““Grand Designs””. Here I should perhaps declare a non-interest, in that I have been in discussion with the programme makers because my wife and I are in the process of designing a modest retirement home that will be ecologically sensitive and sustainable. However, they have taken the view, which is probably right, that it is of no televisual interest because we do not intend to have a major row with our architect, to go twice over the price that we can afford or to have a major row between ourselves. Therefore, it will not make good television. However, the point I wish to make is that that Channel 4 programme has a huge and growing audience. People are interested in the quality of design. I wish to add to the points that were powerfully made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that there is an obligation on Parliament to set the tone in expecting better design in the future than we have experienced in the more recent past.