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		Localist Planning Thursday, 3rd July 2008 Direct Democracy Guest Bulletin After this May's local elections results, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown again promised to listen and lead. However, his insistence on pushing on with ratification of the European Constitution dressed up as the Lisbon Treaty - despite the Irish "No" vote and the views of the British people - demonstrates that for the Labour Government warm words count for more than real action. A week later, in a rare moment of solidarity with British business, the Government has now taken away from elected politicians the ultimate power to decide on planning permission for major infrastructure projects and granted this power to an unelected and remote infrastructure commission. This measure undermines democratic accountability - but if you are running a business, it has the advantage (we are told) of removing a degree of uncertainty from the planning process. Business, after all, has enough risks to manage without having to pay heed to public opinion too. For this reason, the large business lobby that supported the new planning bill gives the impression that democracy has apparently become a nuisance and too great a risk for them. Isn't it strange, then, that it was private capital that financed many of the major infrastructure projects built in the twentieth century? So perhaps it is not democracy - in the form of the existence of an elected Minister's right to veto a project - that is at fault at all. I would suggest that it is Ministers themselves that have been at fault over the past decade for the failure to progress major infrastructure projects. As Chris Hannant, head of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce has been quoted as saying, crucial infrastructure projects are not only being held back by the complexities of the present system but also "the delays that come from decisions being made by ministers." Of course we need streamlined decision-taking processes when it comes to planning applications. But that need not be at the expense of democratic accountability. How now can we hold accountable those who decide on the bulldozing of homes or the destruction of areas of natural beauty or even for the failure to build new power stations? Bureaucrats are not answerable through the ballot box. The remedy for slow decision-taking is good politicians, preferably locally elected, getting on with their job of listening and deciding. Instead, we are given the clunking fist remedy of a centralised, unelected and unaccountable commission. Moreover, why not trust local communities to organise local referenda on these important matters? After all local referenda are currently used to decide on housing stock transfers and the New Deal for Communities (NDCs). Not all local communities are NIMBYist. While some local communities might believe that the costs outweigh the benefits, many other communities would welcome the investment, jobs and other planning gains that might arise as a result of a new infrastructure. Developers should have to think about the community benefits of their plans and if there aren't any, they should be offering incentives to local residents. Who better than local people themselves to weigh up the potential costs against the potential benefits in a way that the man from the ministry could never judge. Syed Kamall is Conservative MEP for London