Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

I shall try to be brief and to stick strictly to new clause 1, which seeks to close a loophole in planning law that allows one council to try to meet its housing targets by designating areas within the boundaries of another council as its preferred area for development. The Opposition do not like top-down housing targets at all: we want to sweep them away and replace them with responsibility devolved to local authorities, which will be given freedom and proper incentives to meet the needs of their local areas. They will do that much better than the present system does. However, while the present system exists, we need to tackle this pernicious loophole, which is, I understand, being exploited by councils in several parts of the country. It came to my attention as a result of a chain of events in my area. Luton and South Bedfordshire councils were obliged to meet the housing targets imposed on them within the Milton Keynes and South Midlands sub-regional spatial strategy. Initially, the councils designated as their preferred areas for development locations within their boundaries. Then, as occasionally happens, they met local resistance, but they discovered the loophole and decided that they would overcome that local resistance by proposing an area in my constituency—as it happens, it is named Lilley Bottom and is one of the most beautiful features of my constituency—as their preferred area for development, thereby escaping any retribution from their voters and leaving the voters in the threatened area powerless to oppose them. One can understand the outrage that followed. One thing that unites the people of Luton and Hitchin is a desire to retain the green belt that separates them from each other. The proposal is unpopular in Luton as well as in north Hertfordshire. However, it is a double outrage for the people of north Hertfordshire that it has been imposed on them from outside. The Minister said that in her letter she had said councils would not be able to meet their housing targets by doing such things, but that is not how I read it at all. It seemed to me that she was saying that they were in some way meeting sub-regional spatial strategy housing targets. Certainly, the only reason that the councils are proposing to build in north Hertfordshire is that they believe it will help them to meet their housing targets. I shall look very closely at what she said, and if they are acting on a misapprehension I shall draw that to their attention and they will promptly stop. However, I fear that that is not the case. My analysis—and therefore the need for the new clause—has been endorsed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England as well as most local conservation bodies that want this beautiful area of the country protected and want to prevent a precedent from being created that would undoubtedly be followed in many other areas of the country. This Bill is called the "Local Democracy Bill". It aims to promote local democracy. I submit that we cannot have democracy without accountability. If one council can build in another council's area and therefore not be responsible to those affected by its action, that is a negation and denial of democracy. I hope that the Minister will think again and will recognise that the new clause would strengthen the democratic nature of her Bill as well as ending an unsustainable loophole in the law. I hope that we will have an opportunity to vote on the new clause in due course.