Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point I would make is that we have met the A and E targets more times this winter than when the shadow Health Secretary was sitting in the Cabinet with responsibility for the NHS. I commend what our doctors, nurses and A and E departments have done, because they are coping with around 1.2 million more A and E attendances every year than when we came to power in 2010. They have done magnificent work, and they are doing it on the basis of having not only many thousand more doctors but 2,000 more nurses than in 2010. That is more nurses in our NHS than at any time since Nye Bevan stood at this Dispatch Box back in the 1940s, and that is a record of which the Government can be proud.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)]

The village of Barrow in the Ribble Valley has fewer than 300 houses. The local authority has given permission for just over 100 new houses there, but the planning inspector has overturned a refusal of the local authority and will impose 504 more houses on that village against the wishes of the local MP, the local authority and the local people. Will my right hon. Friend look again at the workings of the Planning Inspectorate to ensure that from now on the planning inspector puts the wishes of local people at the heart of the Localism Act 2011 as he intended?

[The Prime Minister]

I will look carefully at the specific incidents that the hon. Gentleman brings to the House. Under the Localism Act, local authorities are able to produce a local plan and get that agreed, which will give local people greater control over what is built and where. In the meantime, things are judged against the national planning policy framework, which does have protections for green belt; it does insist on going ahead with brownfield developments and it does take into account pre-existing local plans. If that needs to be clarified, then clarify it we will.