Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Hodgson. At this point, I wish to thank the hard-working Whips’ Office, which, in this combination of amendments, has done an excellent job of tying together two things. I acknowledge just how much of a difficult job we have been giving it with Bills at the moment, with our alphabet soups. I think we should acknowledge that and say thank you. Amendment 157, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, might have been written after my visit to Belper in the Amber Valley in Derbyshire in about 2012. This was a visit focused on trying to protect the green-belt patch of land between Belper and an adjoining village. The plan was to build across the lot and join up that village and Belper together. It was also for speculative development, as the noble Baroness said, and there was a lot of frustration about that. Then we went to lunch. We were sitting in the café and above us there was a lovely woodcut, a historic piece of art, of an old mill in town when it was in operation. I said to the local party, “What’s happening with that mill?”, and they said, “Oh, it’s derelict and we worry about it being burned down”. We were going to build on the green belt and destroy the village environment, and there was that obvious place where we could have been putting housing, right in the centre of town, where all the facilities were, where there was public transport, et cetera. I am afraid that the Government often do not seem to understand the point of the green belt, and I think that is clear in the invention of the term “grey belt”. Yes, green belt can be to protect beautiful green spaces, nature, farming land, et cetera, but it is also to prevent communities—towns, cities and villages—sprawling and linking up together. The whole idea of “grey belt” really avoids understanding that.