Zac Goldsmith MP: Planning reform must not be a blank cheque for developers

Zac Goldsmith is Member of Parliament for Richmond Park. Follow Zac on Twitter.

Like many colleagues, I have been inundated by letters from constituents about the Government’s proposed reform to the Planning system, almost of all of which express major concern. People are right to be paying attention; whatever reforms are introduced will leave a legacy for years to come. 

I don’t doubt that the current system needs radical reform. It is, on so many levels, utterly perverse. It lacks democracy, it dis empowers even locally elected representatives, and it leads more often than not to the kind of development most people abhor.  Indeed it is hard to imagine a system better designed to alienate and enrage.

Time and again local people rise up against a proposed new development – the paving over of a local garden for example — only to be squashed by the authorities. Even where residents, local councillors and elected MPs are united in determined opposition, their wishes are so often simply brushed aside by a remote planning bureaucrat. 

Zac Goldsmith: If we are to render obsolete the loathsome posturings of the BNP, we need to address the issues on which they have been allowed to make political capital

Zac Goldsmith is prospective parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park.

Nick Griffin’s performance on Question Time was abysmal. He looked like a school bully who’d been rounded upon. Smirking and sweaty, he failed even to land a blow on the issues that matter most to his Party. For the BNP, it must have been deeply embarrassing.

The BBC on the other hand seemed to have survived. With Peter Hain launching legal action to prevent them giving Griffin a platform, and hundreds of protestors vowing to prevent Griffin entering the building, the threat had passed. Britain was safe.

But the debate that preceded and followed the Question Time Special was frighteningly unsophisticated. At first, a staggering number of people demanded the suspension of free speech. In one moment of foolish hysteria, we came close to sacrificing the one sacred principle that distinguishes our country from so many others – just to keep one half-wit from the public glare. Had that happened, Britain would have taken a giant step backwards.

And it wouldn’t even have had the desired effect. Since when has banning an idea eradicated that idea? Has a German ban on holocaust denial prevented people buying into one of the silliest conspiracy theories of all time? Of course not. On the contrary, denial of debate has meant that an idea that could be dismantled in minutes has been allowed to flourish underground.

Zac Goldsmith is prospective parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park.

Zac Goldsmith: Reversing Labour's Stalinist tendency to police, regulate and ban will create a more responsible and successful society

Zac Goldsmith is prospective parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park.

The compulsion to regulate almost every aspect of our lives has become one of the defining characteristics of the last decade. We’ve now reached a point where the law makes common sense a crime, and criminals of increasing number of respectable people.

We all know that this government has been far too trigger happy when it comes to making new laws; an estimated 6,500 since 1997.  That’s a problem in itself; a bureaucratic nightmare. But the bigger problem is the underlying philosophy that has given rise to, and shaped these laws.

Whatever the issue, our Government takes as its starting point an assumption that we are all fools, or villains - or both. Almost every ordinary human activity has therefore been regulated, policed, or in some cases banned altogether. So if one farmer is cruel to his animals, they must all be regulated into oblivion. If one painter falls from his ladder, then ladders must be banned.

The same approach is now being extended to parenting. Last week, I chatted to mothers outside a North Kingston school with Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling. We discovered that more or less everyone we spoke to would become a criminal under new laws that require any adult who looks after a friend’s children to register with Ofsted. To be able to legally continue doing what parents have done since the very beginning of time, they will now have to have a criminal record check, learn first aid, take a childcare course and even follow Labour’s “nappy curriculum” for under-fives (whatever that is).  They will also have to open their homes for inspection by officials. 

To be absolutely certain that none of us escapes, the watchdog has warned that; “Reward is not just a case of money changing hands. The supply of services or goods and in some circumstances reciprocal arrangements can also constitute reward.” It’s an over-used term, but this is Stalinist. What we are seeing is the effective nationalisation of parenting.