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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I am afraid that if the Chancellor gets his way, nobody will be consulted. No community can thrive if the system is biased against change. Every community must look to create new homes, workplaces and jobs. A planning system that is devoid of obligations to provide for the future and that just protects the present is destined to fail, but a fair and open planning system that involves local people, and that leads to better decision making and greater consensus on development, is important. Although the Government promise to give local people more of a say, their policies do exactly the opposite. Ten months in, their record on planning is one of incompetence and broken promises. Government Members who represent our green and pleasant land must be in mourning, for although existing controls on green belt will be retained, the Chancellor made it very clear that the Government"““will remove the nationally imposed targets on the use of previously developed land.””—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 956.]" Forgive me for putting that in plain English. More developers will be given a yes, but as there will be no obligation to develop brownfield sites, by definition, more greenfields will be developed. I do not hear any cheers from Government Members for that one. We can add to the chaos in the planning system the fact that plans for more than 200,000 new homes have been dropped. Under Labour, more than 2 million more homes were built in England, including 500,000 affordable homes; 1.5 million social homes were brought up to a decent standard; 700,000 new kitchens, 525,000 new bathrooms and more than 1 million new central heating systems were installed; 1 million more families were able to buy their own homes; help was provided to more than 130,000 first-time buyers through shared-ownership schemes or equity loans; and even in the teeth of the recession, the previous Government were building 55,000 new affordable homes, which is more than this Government will build in any of the next four years.