Labour is wrong again - Telegraph Ed Miliband was in Stevenage yesterday to launch Labour's new Housing Commission, led by Sir Michael Lyons, which has been asked to come up with a plan for increasing the supply of new homes in England to more than 200,000 a year. Quite why Sir Michael has been given the job is something of a mystery, however, since Mr Miliband appears to have come up with a long list of ideas of his own. There will be more new towns and garden cities, and an expansion of social and affordable housing. Those local authorities that want to build will be given a "Right to Grow" to ensure that they can do so - while "home-blocker" councils and "land-hoarding" developers will share the same fate as the wicked energy companies. Mr Miliband is right to focus public attention on the lack of house-building, which is an issue of pressing concern - not least since Labour failed to build anything like the number of homes required during its long years in office. But his proposals are deeply flawed. For all their problems (enumerated at length by this newspaper), the Coalition's planning reforms at least handed control to individual communities, within the context of national needs. Labour's focus will instead be on local councils, ensuring they act not as representatives of their voters but as concrete-pouring instruments of Westminster's will. This is not only a recipe for unsympathetic development, but it will strip away democratic accountability, since this "Right to Grow" will enable such councils to invade their neighbours" terrain with scant regard for the opinions of the existing residents. And that is before considering the way the "use it or lose it" ultimatum to developers rides roughshod over property rights. As with energy prices, Mr Miliband is displaying his peculiar gift for asking exactly the right questions, while providing all the wrong answers.