Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

That is absolutely right. As for the consultation on the planning policy statement on planning and climate change, to which I referred earlier, we still do not know what position the Government are taking after considering all the responses, but I hope that Ministers will give weight to the issues raised by organisations such as the Association for the Conservation of Energy, which drew attention to serious weaknesses in the draft planning policy statement that, if unchanged, would effectively deter councils from trying to achieve better environmental standards. For instance, paragraph 31 of the draft PPS says:"““Planning Authorities should not need to devise their own standards for the environmental performance of individual buildings as these are set out nationally through the Building Regulations””." That is the wrong approach. Building regulations should be minimum standards. Ministers have said that they believe that building regulations should be minimum standards, yet paragraph 31 implies that in fact, the Government believe that—most of the time, at least—they should be maximum standards. Councils should be free to go for higher standards; indeed, at this time they should be encouraged to do so. On top of this, the draft PPS sets four hurdles for councils to jump before they can set even limited higher standards. They must identify local developments or site opportunities, ruling out authority-wide policies, as in Reading; they must set out their local approach in advance in a development plan document; they have to estimate the cost to possible developers; and the content of the local development documents and the reasoning for it have to be approved by a Government inspector. I was vice-chair of a planning committee in a previous life and I am sure that, faced with these hurdles, very few local authorities will try for higher standards. The development plan process is tortuous enough, without extra complications. A fairer, simpler, far better and more effective approach is that taken in my amendment. It recognises the vital part that councils can and should play in limiting their local carbon footprints. It seeks to free them to do that and encourages them to act. I hope that in responding, my hon. Friend the Minister will recognise its merits.