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Planning Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. I listened to the previous speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and this one, and it is good to hear the voice of the architectural profession in the Chamber at this point. Having spent a number of years sitting on committees trying to persuade them that design might come into it, with a perfectly good presentation before the committee but a not particularly good discussion about it and, sometimes, an appalling conclusion come to, it seems to me that the great value of making a statutory requirement at this point in the Bill is that a committee would have to say, ““What about the design?””. The members of the committee would not agree about what was good design. Some of them would be rather knowledgeable; others would not have a clue. Some would be totally utilitarian; some would have a good visual sense; but they would at least say, ““Is this good design?””, and the architect could deploy his argument for why it was good design. The amendment is sound and I do not see why the Government should not accept it.