Clause 32
Planning Bill
5:00 pm
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour)
My hon. Friend makes a good case in his examination of what the Government propose. I look forward to hearing the Minister for Local Government’s reply. However, is part of the problem the fact that advice to Ministers is often excessively inhibiting in terms of the application of common sense? I say that with the experience of having had to make decisions on planning appeals, when sometimes the advice of officials was that one could not even look at the application in proper terms. Therefore, something more clinical that allows the application of judgment within a context set by Ministers might be a way of reintroducing common sense into the examination of such matters.