My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke. The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, made an important point about insufficient numbers of planners in local authorities. A few years ago, I was a member of Lewisham Council, and we had that problem day in, day out—you saw that with residents. But a shortage of planning officers was not a problem when I was a member of Southwark Council in the 1980s, so something has happened, and the Government have to address that.
The noble Earl made a point about having increased the planning of things, and that is true, but more needs to be done because there is a huge problem here. We are sitting here again, debating another Bill containing bits about planning. I have lost count of how many
planning Bills we have had in the 13 years I have been a Member of this House. One after another comes along, and we seem to debate similar issues and problems, but we are not dealing with the problem.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made us aware of similar problems in the Cambridgeshire area. His point about getting resource from the developers, but it not being connected to a development, should be looked at: you could bring extra resource into departments that way, enabling more planners to be recruited. So the Government should look at that, as one way to enable more resource to be brought in.
I am so pleased that my noble friend Lady Twycross made an intervention—she is the deputy mayor for fire and resilience in London, and she is hugely experienced in this area. It was good to hear her contribution. Although it was good to hear that the Government are doing certain things on resilience, there are bigger issues: local resilience forums and how they operate and work with government need to be looked at. People such as my noble friend, who has worked on that in London for many years with the Mayor of London and government, certainly should be listened to on those issues. With that, I withdraw Amendment 312B.