We have almost become used to taxation by stealth but there is another area where the Government is threatening to pull the wool.

Under the banner Faster Fairer Planning For All, the latest Green Paper, published on December 12, it is proposing to take away our right to argue against mass housing development at the local level.

By transferring strategic planning decisions to the regional authority, the Government will be able to ride roughshod over the objections of those of us who care about our environment.

On the one hand, Stephen Byers says he wants local people to have more say over development in their area but, on the other, the Green Paper he has introduced will allow major strategic decisions to be taken by a remote regional bureaucracy.

Structural plans at county level will disappear.

Perhaps the Government thinks we are so busy in the run-up to Christmas we will not notice what it is doing. Well, we have noticed.

-Richard Allden, Council for the Protection of Rural England, New Church Road, Hove