My Lords, I am afraid that you have the understudy. As a former leader of a city council, I have followed the Bill very closely. I am delighted to make a contribution, even if it is in the last minute of the game. I thank my noble friend Lady Young, the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for their detailed and careful consideration of these issues—land is, indeed, a finite resource—and how these might be incorporated into the Bill, as well as for their long-standing championing of the issues of shared land use. These challenges are of incorporating the needs of competing demands, alongside ensuring proper protections for the environment and that consideration is given for access to green space and all the benefits that that brings to people and communities.
It continues to be a disappointment that no progress has been made on a land use framework in spite of ministerial promises, which have been reiterated by both noble Lords in the earlier part of this debate, and to hear that the Government seem to be rolling back from a land use framework that addresses all the issues flagged up in your Lordships’ Select Committee, including planning, development, housing, infrastructure, energy and transport. If these issues are not addressed in a land use framework, it will be seriously incomplete, which will undermine its ability to ensure that our scarce land use resources are able to deliver for all the policy areas covered by the levelling-up Bill.
The introduction of this Bill, with its intention to reshape the planning framework—I have had plenty of headaches about planning in my time in local government—and to deliver on cross-departmental and multifunctional land uses, seems like an opportunity too good to miss. I hope that the Minister will give careful consideration to using this legislation to give some impetus to the introduction of a land use framework, and that all the hard work that has gone into the Bill from all sides of the House will lead to a satisfactory conclusion in an extremely important area.