When a proposal gets the business lobby salivating so much that it can barely hide its glistening fangs, I like to check the small print.

And on inspection, the Planning Bill lumbering through the Commons is pure chicanery. It has been presented variously as an economic imperative, an answer to climate change and a way to “give the public a greater say”. In fact, it is designed to bypass democracy on the very biggest and most controversial planning applications: for airports, power stations, motorways, waste sites and railways. Why let local quibbles get in the way of progress, especially when construction firms are feeling the pinch?

I am sympathetic to the idea that the planning system needs speeding up. Activists spin out inquiries for years by debating the merits of energy policy or the lunch habits of the lesser-spotted corncrake. Big projects like Terminal 5 tend to go through anyway, but at an absurdly inflated price. That is bad for the economy and unfair to business.

But it should be perfectly possible to make faster decisions and be accountable. However, this Government seems to want to decide by stealth. If the Bill becomes law, ministers will write “national policy statements” outlining roughly how many power stations, roads, incinerators and so on they want to see. Then an infrastructure planning commission will approve each specific project. There will be loads of “consultation” - except that no one is obliged to take much notice of it. There will be endless “debate” - but no vote in Parliament. Government will dictate what is built and then pretend that it has nothing to do with the outcome, by giving the final say to an unelected superquango. This will be no doubt be manned by Sir Fixit, Sir Sell-Off and the Lord Shedload of Concrete.

Of course we need big infrastructure projects. Many of us who spend time in France lament the lack of a British high-speed rail link and our timidity on nuclear power. But to blame the planning system

for everything is disingenuous. The nice man from the CBI insists to me that “the lights will go out” unless nuclear plants, wind farms and coal plants are fast-tracked. But that risk was created first by Labour's refusal, for nine whole years, to come up with an energy policy.

I have spoken to wind farm operators who say that most of their applications go through on appeal, and that their biggest gripe is not planning but the lack of connections to the national grid. I have spoken to nuclear experts who expect new plants to be built on existing sites, which would be relatively uncontroversial. The big obstacle to investment, they say, is the Government's refusal to contemplate subsidy. Ministers should not attack Nimbys to cover their ineptitude.

I'm not sure which is more galling: the Government's Stalinism or its naivety. This Bill is one of a series of moves to abolish local democracy, started by John Prescott in 2002. Planning inspectors who used to be independent have become an arm of the State. Councils are bribed and threatened to build houses to meet an arbitrary Whitehall target.

The naivety is to suppose that planning decisions can be “depoliticised”. Officials talk excitedly about the infrastructure planning commission as another Monetary Policy Committee. But interest rates can be set by independent academics. Planning decisions are worth billions to the very interests whose expertise is sought. And big money can warp common sense. Ask any local group that has had to brief itself on the law, read structure plans and raise money to fight developments. The many people I have met in such groups are among the most decent, thoughtful and public-spirited in the land. Theirs are the real “communities” - coming together to protect views and spaces, or to promote better design. They're not the “communities” that the Planning Minister talks about.

Planning is inherently political. The way we use land in a crowded country, the way we balance competing interests, is raw politics. The only question is whether we let ministers avoid taking responsibility for their decisions.

Am I overegging this? Officials say the legislation will affect no more than 50 projects a year. But there is no mention of such a number in the Bill. There is no definition of what constitutes a “major” road or waste plant. It is an open invitation to developers to keep expanding their sights. Think you've seen off that incinerator? It could be back.

Navigating all the doublespeak of “empowerment” and “consultation” makes me feel rather like the hapless Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who wakes up to find his house - along with Earth - being demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur hasn't seen the plans, because they have been “on display” in a locked filing cabinet. Back in non-fiction, our own lawmakers talk increasingly as though they were on another planet.

Yesterday the Government bought off Labour rebels with a limp promise to review the infrastructure planning commission after two years. It also committed to “pre-approve” sites for nuclear power stations and airports. But that means that ministers will effectively be giving planning permission as soon as the policy statement is made, in the absence of any application from a builder. That is crazy. The plan to streamline eight different consent regimes into one will help to speed things up. So will clearer statements of national policy. We don't need to go further to make Lord Shedload's day.

The greatest irony is that the new regime will be wide open to legal challenge. Friends of the Earth is already considering challenging the national policy statements and the commission decisions under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines the right to a fair hearing. That could delay projects even more. Too much democracy has been a problem. Too little will be far, far worse.

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