It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), who has long experience of these matters and much expertise, and with whom I often profoundly disagree. I rise to support the Second Reading of the Bill, whose measures need to be set in the context of the Government’s wider
reforms of planning, local economic development and infrastructure. We must be cautious about overplaying the ambition of the Bill.
On the broader picture, we need urgently to rebalance the British economy, to stimulate house building and to build infrastructure, particularly in areas such as the west midlands and the black country, part of which I represent. As other hon. Members have pointed out, over the past two and half years this Government have made significant progress on implementing localism—through the Localism Act 2011, their reforms to the planning system, the implementation of neighbourhood planning, and the publication of the national planning policy framework, which has radically simplified the amount of planning guidance that now drives the planning system in the UK.
Local planning authorities need to be more efficient in terms of the speed with which they process planning applications. We need authorities to be more efficient to give clarity both to developers and to communities about decisions being made about their areas. It is right, despite the overblown rhetoric of Labour Members—