Andrew George

In that case, the Minister has not explained that to his planning inspectors. If he looks at the appeal reference APP/D0840/W/25/3367358 for land east of Meneth, Bonallack Lane, Gweek in my constituency, he will see that Inspector Harrington was very clear on 23 February 2025 that a location that previously had permission for an all-affordable rural exception site was converted to an open market site, purely as a result of the lack of a five-year land supply. I think the Minister needs to look at this again. We need additional tools to address the housing need of local people because the current tools are simply not working; indeed, they have been undermined by the Government’s own policy. The problem with the house building target approach is that it is built on a delusion that private developers will collude with Government in driving down the price of their finished product. We have found over a decade—certainly in Cornwall—that developers will only deliver their homes at times when the market is buoyant, and they will not collude with Government in order to achieve those outcomes. I know the Government have a series of concerns with the Bill and, in the interests of time, I will quickly rattle through them. They say there is a risk it is not compatible with property rights under the European convention on human rights. I do not think that applies as far as the powers of my Bill are concerned. In any case, there would be other measures that we could introduce that would resolve these issues and provide additional safeguards.