Dr Luke Evans

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out; I hope she will get in contact with her colleagues in the Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley and Bosworth borough council to make that exact point. They could take more control if they had an up-to-date local plan and learned from their neighbours in North West Leicestershire—part of which is now in my constituency—which does have a five-year land supply and an up-to-date local plan, and is making the best of that because it is able to take in business rates and turn that into a positive. The community chooses where development goes and has control over it. The mechanism is there, and I have been raising this issue with the last Government and this Government. I am keen to ensure that the Government are able to kick local decision making in the right direction to prevent failings. Neighbourhood plans are the protective mechanism that can deal with that. I argued with the last Government, and will argue with this Government, that neighbourhood plans should have more weight, especially where there is no up-to-date local plan, because that would do exactly what the hon. Lady is asking for. They allow communities to have infrastructure and amenities, in keeping with the their heritage and environment, without top-down speculative developments that place 100, 200, 300, 500 or 1,000 houses on top of them. Communities just will not swallow that. That is the key and why I secured this debate. Let me continue with the example of my constituency. We now have the prospect of devolution, with 21 councils getting a legal invite to change the way in which they structure themselves. I am not sure about other Members, but if I got a “legal invite” from the court, I would not ignore it. This is being imposed on local governments. In my area, we have at least three different versions of what devolution will look like. This will have a drastic impact on planning, yet we have no idea of what the neighbourhood plans or planning authorities will look like, especially if we are divided into one, two or three different unitaries.