16:00 Mr Jones (South Shields) (Lab)

Fourthly, it will provide greater assurance that important policy safeguards that apply nationally, or to significant parts of England, such as protections for areas at risk of flooding, policy on climate change, and policies to protect the green belt, will be upheld with statutory weight and applied quickly across the country, including when any changes are made.

We have just discussed a clause that will compel local authorities to put in place an up-to-date local plan every five years. What we are discussing here is making sure that, where we get outliers and places with out-of-date local plans, green belt protection and other such things can be maintained through the national development management policies. This is a crucial point. We wish to use national policy to drive higher standards where those standards at the moment are not as they should be, especially on the environment and to tackle climate change. It is important that those policies can take precedence in the event of conflict with the out-of-date policies in plans.

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