"As my hon. Friend knows, I was the person who invented neighbourhood plans. I have a local plan in my home constituency for a town that has some land that it wishes to develop, but it is having enormous problems with the community land trust model in trying to do …..." John Howell - View Speech
"As the Secretary of State is aware, I have been much involved in reform of the planning system under previous Governments, and I urge him to be radical when he produces his White Paper. I am glad he has retained his commitment to involve local communities. Strengthening the role of …..." John Howell - View Speech
"My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the settlement. The case was supposed to be settled through a process of mediation. The settlement came to more than £57 million. Does she not think that it is outrageous that most of that sum is going to lawyers, which brings into …..." John Howell - View Speech
"I have been involved in planning for most of my working life. I wrote “Open Source Planning”, which helped to guide the reforms of 2010 and 2011; I helped to draft the national planning policy framework; I sat on the local expert planning group, which sought to simplify planning; and …..." John Howell - View Speech
"I start by picking up where the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) left off: like her, I have been to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, many times over the past few years. It has been a very moving experience, which I shall never forget, no matter …..." John Howell - View Speech
"I completely agree. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust uses the definition that genocides are those that have been declared by the United Nations, so the quicker that that moves on—so we can see what happened there—and the judgment is made, the sooner we can include Burma in the list of …..." John Howell - View Speech
"When I first came to the House in 2008, I began work on a paper called “Open Source Planning”, which set out an important distinction and led to the abolition of the top-down targets that had existed under the Labour Government. It took a little while to get rid of …..." John Howell - View Speech
"My hon. Friend may be aware that Guildford has run into difficulties with many villages over the production of neighbourhood plans. My intervention is just to tell him that I too am aware of that, in my role as Government champion for neighbourhood planning, and I am dealing with the …..." John Howell - View Speech
"I will be quick. Does my hon. Friend think that shale gas extraction is worth while? Are there enough layers of schist in this country, as opposed to the vast expanses of the European plain, to make it profitable or to get enough gas out of it?..." John Howell - View Speech
"I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend in the flow of such an elegant speech, but does he share my view that we gave ordinary people the ability to concentrate on the essence of good design as one of the key things in putting together neighbourhood plans? I …..." John Howell - View Speech