Daily Telegraph

The Prime Minister exhorted the Cabinet to step up efforts to increase house-building, speed up major infrastructure projects, and cut red tape for businesses…during a Cabinet meeting.

He set out areas of particular concern, including regulations for business, problems with the planning system, the tendency for EU directives to be “gold plated” when they are implemented in this country.

“It is difficult to get big infrastructure projects off the ground, whether in the public or the private sector. That is very difficult to make happen,” he said.

Mr Osborne, Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet office minister and Mr Cameron’s policy adviser, and Nick Clegg all spoke at length during the discussion.

The spokesman also confirmed that details of the government’s planning law reforms would be published “soon”.

“Reform of the planning system is a key part of what we are doing to boost growth,” he said. “We set out the principle of a presumption in favour of sustainable development. I think we will be setting out our plans on that quite soon.”

Why is it that ministers and in particular David Cameron, insist on continuing to make such I’ll-informed comments about the planning system, despite their own experience of it as MPs? Do they really believe that their constant repetition of, ‘growth at any cost, development will be our saviour, trust us we’re MPs’, will placate those who will soon be suffering from the rampant development they are promoting?