Matthew Pennycook

I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that sort of hyperbole is beneath him, if I may say so. We are not absolving the Mayor of London of his responsibilities. The previous Government put in place a system whereby the arbitrary 35% urban uplift applied not merely to the core of a city region—as it does in every other part of the country—but to every London borough. That produced a fantastical figure that was completely divorced from reality. We have abolished that urban uplift and reset the standard method. That still leaves London with an incredibly stretching target of 88,000 homes per year, which is more than double recent delivery. We want to work in partnership with the Mayor of London, but we will be pushing him to increase his ambition for what can be achieved in London, and his delivery. We place great importance on agricultural land and food production. The national planning policy framework remains clear that where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of poorer-quality land should be preferred to those of higher quality. Those protections remain in the framework.