My Lords, I had not intended to speak on the amendment, but my degree of rage is rising so I feel I need to say something. I declare an interest, because the very phenomenon that has been described—reducing the number of people who could object to the creation of a vibrant, attractive and charismatic garden city that nevertheless ruins one village next to it—is precisely the situation I find myself in in North Bedfordshire.
I make one plea in all of this. There can be an unholy alliance between the proposers of such a development and the local authority, because it plays very much to the business of achieving housing targets in a publicly very sellable way and reduces the angst felt in many communities across the whole of the planning authority’s patch, where previously the proposals to meet housing targets would have been infill, edge-of-village development and attempts to boost the viability of smaller settlements within the planning authority’s area, of the sort the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about. I sound a note of caution about the unholy alliance that can arise, because it can be seen as the line of least resistance.
Having been involved in a similar development in Cambridgeshire, in Cambourne, where there was a considerable commitment to get the design of the settlement right ab initio on a greenfield site, there needs to be a clear view of how the promised benefits touted at the beginning of the planning process actually get delivered over a substantive period. The experience is that they can gently dribble away during the course of many successive years until the settlement is complete.