National Planning Policy Framework

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Another person who is keen not to be associated with the strategies—I understand that. The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne said that he

“quickly found that they had…few friends”—

The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is another ex-friend. The right hon. Gentleman continued:

“our regional spatial strategies and our approach to planning…was too top-down”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 272WH.]

That is a matter of consensus across the House.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that he probably inherited a planning system that meant that constituents such as mine felt completely divorced from any achievement in the planning system? In fact, they had no say whatsoever in the chaotic system of house building that meant that constituencies such as mine were inundated with planning applications that they had no say over.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

I am delighted to welcome a new convert to localism. I chided the shadow Secretary of State when we published the framework and said, perhaps unfairly, that he was an old centralist. It must have had quite an effect, because he has now published an article, in The Daily Telegraph of all places, in which he gives a paean of praise to localism. He writes:

“I want to see a radical devolution of power to local communities. We should do this both because it is right and because there is so much skill and potential in every community to make more of its own decisions.”

I could not have put it better myself and am delighted that he has been converted to the cause.