The hon. Gentleman helpfully anticipates my next point.
The Committee concentrated on funding issues because that was the remit of the report. However, we said in passing, as we did in our report on the national planning
policy framework, that we did not believe there was evidence that planning was the obstacle to growth. We accepted the point, which the Local Government Association has made again recently, that there are 400,000 planning permissions for new homes that have not been activated. Getting at those is a major challenge that we should talk about. I do not believe that the measures in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will deal with that problem, although that did not form part of our report because it has been published since our inquiry. The LGA also says that 87% of all the planning applications made last year were given permission. Planning is therefore not the problem.
There is a potential long-term problem, which I have raised with Housing Ministers on a number of occasions, if local plans become the heart of the planning system, as they ought to be. Many local authorities ought to speed up the process of getting those plans in place, because they are a crucial part of the planning system. The problem is what we should do if the housing numbers in the local plans do not add up to a figure that meets the national housing requirements. I asked the previous Minister for Housing that question on a number of occasions and he never seemed to have an answer.
I congratulate the new planning Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who came to the Select Committee a couple of weeks ago with Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, who was reviewing the supplementary planning guidance. At the top of their list of issues that were not addressed properly in the supplementary planning guidance was the need for a consistent measure of housing need that could be incorporated into local plans on a consistent basis. That will be a helpful move. It will take time for it to be effective, but there is a recognition that the abolition of regional spatial strategies and the total reliance on local plans has created a disconnect with the national targets.