Matthew Pennycook

I am not sure I detected a question there, but there were several points. I will endeavour to respond to at least a few of them. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s broad support for the framework and, in particular, for renewable energy deployment. On the charge that we are bypassing local democracy and local communities, I refute that entirely. We are encouraging, in the way that the previous Government did, the adoption of up-to-date local plans that are the best means of shaping development in any particular part of the country. That is where local people and communities can get involved to determine what development looks like and where it goes, but it must be a conversation about what development looks like and where it goes, rather than whether it happens at all. Under the current system, as a result of the NPPF changes in December 2023 and the fact that we have less than a third up-to-date plan coverage, there is too much speculative development outside of plans, which communities are rightly taking issue with. On social rented homes, as I have said to the hon. Gentleman previously, until he comes up with a less vague way of funding 150,000 social rented homes, we simply cannot take the point seriously. The Liberal Democrats got away with having no housing spending totals in their election manifesto. I applaud the ambition, but we take a more realistic path to boosting social and affordable homes, putting forward only what we know we can deliver within the spending constraints that we face. Lastly, I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to reform how CPO works. We are taking forward the discretionary power to disapply hope value that the previous Government took through—I commend them for doing that in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. We need that power tested, but we need to go further and we intend to do so in the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill.