It is in my hands. The Whips will see whether their spell has worked.
I start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Planning Minister. He has been incredibly generous in listening to Back-Bench concerns about planning. Having practised in it as a chartered surveyor, I know that it is an incredibly difficult area. The Bill is important, because neighbourhood plans were introduced by the Localism Act 2011—the clue is in the name—and if we can devolve planning down as far as possible, many people will feel that they have ownership of the planning system and be much happier about what is being done to them. In contrast to some Members who have spoken in this debate, I warmly welcome such plans, and the Bill is a good step forward. New clauses 7 and 8 and amendments 19 and 28, which are in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), all represent improvements to the Bill.
We must ensure that neighbourhood plans work, and we need three things to do that. I represent two local authorities, Stroud District Council, which has a local district plan, and Cotswold District Council, which does not, and I have been pretty strong in my words about the latter. The net result in the Cotswold District Council area is that we do not have a single neighbourhood plan in operation.
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I have here a neighbourhood plan; this has 50 or 60 pages of hugely detailed stuff prepared by Fairford Town Council, dealing with not only where houses go, but a host of other aspects such as infrastructure, bus routes and community facilities. It contains a huge range of things, so it is a really good thing to get local people thinking about these plans. They cannot do that, however, unless they have a local plan in place; although they can, theoretically, produce a neighbourhood plan, they need a local plan in place. I therefore urge that we get on to local councils to get one in place.
The second thing that needs to be done is to make sure that the five-year land supply can be controlled by the local authority. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) has made clear, the local planning system is a system of development, not of building. Therefore, if a developer plays the system and does not develop one site but gets planning permission for another, that can throw the system. I am grateful for the Minister’s written statement today, which protects the situation until this Bill comes into effect. Indeed, it goes further in some respects than the Bill, because it protects some aspects of a three-year land supply, so I am grateful for what he has done.
If we do not have confidence in the neighbourhood planning system, we will not get any of the 130 towns and villages that I represent in my huge constituency, where 80% is designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty, to produce a neighbourhood plan. Planning is as difficult in the Cotswolds as it is anywhere in the country, and if we want them to produce these neighbourhood plans, which, as others have said, are difficult, detailed, costly and time-consuming for these volunteers, we need to have confidence in the system. In order for that to happen, these plans must work and stand up to scrutiny, and where a local plan and a neighbourhood plan are in operation, it should be de rigueur that the planning inspector does not overturn them, as happened in Kingswood, in the Stroud constituency. Fortunately, this Bill would rectify that, because Kingswood’s neighbourhood plan was at an advanced stage of preparation but was not actually adopted. Just to show hon. Members how neighbourhood plans should work, let me point out that in many cases well over 50%, and often 60%, vote for these neighbourhood plans in referendums, so they are very popular. As has been said by a number of others, they bring forward more houses, because when people buy in to the system, they tend to want to adopt more houses. So I think this is an excellent Bill and I commend the Minister on what he has done.