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Planning Bill

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Tyler said, the amendment has enthusiastic support from the Liberal Democrat Benches. When we discussed design issues in Committee, I said that that I thought that the 2004 Act included something like this. I remember discussion and we were probably fobbed off with the promise of guidance rather than anything else. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, looked through the Act line by line, and assures me that it is not there. I am sorry about that. Secondly, it would be a great help to those, like myself, who struggle with local planning issues on the ground to have that firmly written into legislation. I can introduce the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, to local planning officers up and down the land who regard planning policy statements as something close to holy writ when they are arguing with their councillors. It would help to have that in the Bill. At present, I am one of the people holding informal negotiations with a supermarket chain, which has put in a reserved matters planning application for quite a large new supermarket in Colne, where I live. Design and new supermarkets do not necessarily fit together. New supermarkets challenge people interested in design more than almost anything else, because they are just big square or rectangular boxes. Nevertheless, we have had interesting discussions with the supermarket chain about how to make it less ugly than it would otherwise be, if I may put it that way, and it has come back with substantial improvements. That is because we are trying to get better design on the ground. Sometimes when I listen to the Ministers, I see them thinking of big projects or prestige projects of any size at the top level of design. All of the real world is not like that; it is a spectrum. There is good design, there is awful design, and there is everything in between. It is incumbent on all of us to try to push the boundary with every project as far as we can in a better direction on that spectrum, even if it is a local supermarket box. It would really help to have this in the Bill, so that we could say to people, ““Look, we have to consider this. We are not just arguing for the sake of it. You have to listen to what we say because if you take it to appeal, we have the legislation behind us””.