In one of the only areas where Britain still provides local people with a vestige of democratic control, over planning decisions, the Government is in the process of imposing a centralised system that would hardly have looked out of place in Stalinist Russia.

Tony Blair may be perfectly sincere when he talks of wanting to let Mrs Jones tell her local constable to catch speeding drivers rather than dope-smokers. He may be genuinely ecstatic at the prospect of Mrs Jones weighing up asthma drugs versus dialysis treatment on the board of her foundation hospital. But his Government is working overtime to prevent Mrs Jones from having any say over what is built in her neighbourhood.

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, overrides the traditional power of local authorities to grant or withhold planning permissions through a process of compromise and consultation. The Bill gives power to un- elected regional bodies over elected local ones. The Treasury Red Book states that local authorities’ comprehensive performance assessments, and the funds they receive, will now be influenced by whether they build enough houses, and that “binding local plans” will be imposed if necessary. In other words, councils will be bribed and threatened until the housing targets are met. An army of inspectors will make the law.

Ministers are frustrated that local authorities have often limited development, reflecting local concerns. Their bean-counters are telling them that Britain will have to house almost four million more households in the next twenty years. So they are determined to drive through new housing developments in the South East, even while they bulldoze empty properties in the North.

The scale of what the Government thinks is needed is stunning. Last year John Prescott’s Sustainable Communities Plan (perhaps better termed Soviet Command Plan) anticipated that 200,000 extra homes were needed over and above those already planned for Ashford, Milton Keynes, Thames Gateway and the M11 corridor. Milton Keynes is expected to double in size in the next 20 years to overtake Leicester and Nottingham. A new partnership body will take planning powers from Milton Keynes council in order to fast-track building on almost undeveloped countryside, much of which does not feature in its existing local plan.

This is not even “predict and provide”, it is “dictate and provide”. Although a “public examination” of the Milton Keynes strategy begins next month, the Campaign to Protect Rural England says that government officials will ensure that the scale of growth cannot be questioned. The new Milton Keynes will emerge from the landscape to the grand design of one Mr Prescott, swallowing up the villages of the Vale of Aylesbury on its way.

To some eyes there may be a heroic machismo about Mr Prescott’s vision. But the fact that England is the most densely populated country in Europe after Holland makes it imperative that we use our remaining land intelligently. The perverse consequence of the rush to sell off playing fields, for example, is that the part of Government that worries about the obesity epidemic is now encouraging schools to pay their pupils to join private gyms. Arbitrary development does not always improve quality of life. The best people to judge when and where it is sensible to remove green space are surely the locals.

According to the Government’s own figures, many greenfield housing developments are still not achieving even the 30 homes per hectare minimum density required in government planning guidance. The planning Bill barely mentions design, although the countryside is still being littered with ugly boxes. Those who wish to redevelop or refurbish an existing building are still penalised by VAT, from which those who build on greenfield sites are exempt. The vast majority of houses needed, according to Kate Barker’s recent review for the Treasury, are affordable homes that used to be built by councils. But each year we sell off 50,000 for every 30,000 we build. We need less haste and more thought.

The word “community” was a great staple of Stalinist rhetoric. So it has been for this Government. Our taxes flow into sustainable communities, secure communities, active communities, and new deals for communities. But let a community galvanise itself to protect the countryside — one of the few times that localities really come together spontaneously, rather than through artificially induced government-sponsored “partnerships” — and hear officials scream: “Nimby: no more new deals for you!” If Mr Blair’s new-found creed of localism does not apply to the issue that many people care most about, why should we believe in it at all?

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