20:55 Andrew Griffith (Conservative)

I requested that the House discuss this important issue back in July, as my constituents in Arundel and South Downs were already feeling the strain of a planning system that had the unique quality of pleasing absolutely no one. I suspect that I make common cause with the Minister when I say that the planning system we have today is too slow, too adversarial and too expensive, and yet still manages to create huge amounts of blight and burden on communities without delivering the volume, quality or even type of homes that we need. Planning permissions are already in place for more than 1 million homes, enough to satisfy the nation’s needs for years to come, but those homes are not being built. Labour’s tax raid on pensions channelled savings instead into buy-to-let property, and we have a legal commitment to net zero, but we are building homes in the middle of nowhere whose occupants wholly reliant on a car to go anywhere.

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