Neighbourhood Planning Bill

My Lords, I was not going to intervene but this is a very important conversation in relation to this microexperience and the behaviour of the examiner, who I am sure is a very good and honourable person. However, this is not just about him or her building a relationship with the people on the ground who know the detail of the situation. I suspect that this is a clue to much wider things going on in our society. I have seen this all over the country and am experiencing it in 10 towns and cities in the north of England in which I am actively involved. Lateral conversations are taking place between the Government, civil servants, policymakers, academics and so on. Those conversations are profoundly out of date and do not cut through into real situations with real people, real places and real relationships. The modern world in which we live is all about people and relationships. It is not about systems, process and policy. I suggest that if government could find a way to encourage far more of these kinds of relationships to develop in relation to this microproblem, we might find a way to take the communities of this country into the new more entrepreneurial world we need to build within which they are active partners, not people who simply have something done to them.