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Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

I disagree fundamentally with my hon. Friend. First, when development does take place, the problem in our society is underdevelopment rather than overdevelopment. The most dense housing area in Britain is the Royal Crescent in Bath. Our problem is bad development, not overdevelopment or underdevelopment. Bath and Monte Carlo are two examples of places where people want to live, and both areas have been built in a dense way, but sensibly. When that happens, it is possible to meet the density requirements, but unfortunately we have not insisted on a quality standard for local development. I feel strongly about what my hon. Friend said for a second reason, which is that I believe in local democracy. I am fed up with people at the centre telling local authorities what is good for them. If local authorities are given powers, they will often make mistakes—of course they will, but central Government usually do. In my experience, it is important to spread decision making around, as people who are close to decisions make fewer mistakes than those at the centre who always think that they know best. It is time for us at the centre to begin to recognise again that if the authority in Manchester wants to carry through a series of policies that we disapprove of—as long as it is paying for those policies itself, and I am suggesting that there should be some areas of additional payment—it should make the decision and put the case to its electorate. That is better than having a lot of faceless bureaucrats at regional or Government level who believe that they know how many seats there ought to be on a bus in Manchester—a matter of supreme unimportance to them but of great importance to the people of Manchester.