In the interest of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, I am afraid that the green belt has just got to go. The only reason that it has survived so long, I reckon, is that the past 50 years have been so uniquely dreadful in the history of architecture. We know that almost every house erected these days is going to be an eyesore, a scar on the landscape. But it was not always so, and it need not be in future. It ought, surely, to be possible to build towns and villages in the countryside, as beautiful as those created by our ancestors. I don't mean Disneyland copies of Georgian terraces and Tudor market halls, of the sort put up by the Prince of Wales in Poundbury. I mean well-proportioned buildings, in a modern idiom, constructed of local materials and easy on the eye.

The late, great Auberon Waugh had a very sensible rule. If you ever meet an architect at a party, he once advised, you should punch him on the nose. Punch enough architects on the nose, and perhaps some of them will get the message that they should start building houses that look pleasant. If that happens, the thought of building over the green belt will suddenly seem less horrifying.