National Planning Policy Framework

David Simpson Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I am sure that the Minister will agree that if we are to have efficient planning policy there needs to be consistency in planning decisions right across the United Kingdom.

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There were more than 1,000 pages of planning policy across 44 different documents of various vintages, so contradictions between them were inevitable, and that was one of the reasons for the inconsistency. Part of the point of consolidating them into a single document is to make it easier to have consistency.