There are many eye-catching ideas in the proposals for an eco-town north of Oxford.

A tram system would provide a service every few minutes linking shops schools and a new rail station. Each home would have a panel stating when the next tram is due and highlighting the cost of jumping in your car under a road charging scheme.

There would be a new junction of the A34 and M40 and improved rail links.

However, as the Government panel set up to challenge the proposed eco-towns identifies, how can we be sure that this would be delivered? Will the cost of all this infrastructure - a tram network does not come cheap - render the housing development prohibitively expensive? Is a road-charging scheme for a small town a practical option?

The panel, whose brief was not to knock down the schemes but to challenge them to improve, wonders whether the Weston Otmoor development would just end up as 'Commuterville'.

It highlights very well the suspicion that the eco-town label is no more than a Government ruse to get its way on housing development over the coming years.