House of Lords

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Tuesday, 19 July 2011.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.

Royal Assent

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

14:35

The following Acts were given Royal Assent:

Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Act,

Finance Act,

European Union Act.

Indonesia: West Papua

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:36

Asked By

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage the government of Indonesia to enter into dialogue with representative leaders of the West Papuan opposition.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has long encouraged the use of constructive dialogue to resolve differences between the Government of Indonesia and the credible representatives of the Papuan and West Papuan people. We welcome the Papuan peace conference held in Jayapura from 5 to 7 July, which included discussions between Indonesian government Ministers and Papuan community leaders addressing political differences over regional governance and possible avenues for further dialogue.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I am particularly glad that he has drawn the attention of the House to the recent peace conference, when more than 500 representatives of different aspects of West Papuan society gathered in order to call for serious negotiations with the Indonesian Government and to appoint five people to negotiate on behalf of the West Papuan people. Will the Minister ask the Indonesian Government to respond to this initiative?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am grateful to the noble and right reverend Lord for his question. We are discussing these matters with the Indonesian Government. We know they are committed to trying to carry this process forward. It is a matter of them putting their money where their mouth is because Papua and West Papua receive by far the largest chunk of the regional funds from the central government. They want to carry this forward. I think the message of the noble and right reverend Lord is the correct one and we shall continue to encourage a constructive dialogue, as I have described.

[Lord Avebury]

Considering that, after many years of struggle and destruction of the economic potential, the Government of Indonesia came to an agreement with the people of Aceh on devolution, will the Foreign Office ask Jakarta to refrain from arresting and imprisoning dozens of people in West Papua for so-called subversion and at least have discussions with the OPM to see how the benefits of mineral exploitation, including BP’s LNG project in Bintuni Bay, could be more widely shared with the people?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

On my noble friend’s final point, my understanding is that not only BP but Rio Tinto and other major investors are determined to work out ways in which the benefits can indeed be shared more widely with the people. My noble friend is absolutely right about that. We have raised queries about some of the arrests—there was one over displaying the wrong flag or something like that—and the size of the sentences seemed disproportionate. We are aware of these worries and we shall continue to raise them with the Government.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that Indonesian policy in West Papua and Papua—I declare an interest as a regular business visitor there for eight years between 2001 and 2009—is a rather disturbing mixture of generosity—as the noble Lord has explained, those provinces are the biggest aid recipients of transfers of resources within Indonesia—and repression? It must surely be in the interest of the Indonesian Government to strengthen that generous strand and to reduce the repression and, above all, to allow the international press free access to Papua and West Papua so that they can see what is really going on.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: it is not only in the interests of Indonesia—wherever there is repression, it is not the right way forward—but in our national interest as well. It may seem far away, but the reality is that we are talking about an area mid-way between the Pacific rim and the Indian Ocean, where all the world’s growth, dynamism and accumulation of wealth and influence will be. It is very important that we are constructively and helpfully involved there.

The matter of journalists' access to Papua and West Papua was discussed at the EU human rights partnership meeting with the Indonesians in Indonesia on 5 May. It is one that we continue to raise, because clearly access for balanced reporting would be of benefit to the situation.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, in terms of human rights, it is normally best for representations to be made on behalf of the European Union as a whole so that individual countries are not picked off. What is the position here? Have there been representations by the European Union? Are we fully behind them?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Yes. I described in my answer to the previous question that on 5 May there was an EU meeting that discussed a number of aspects of repression, including a matter that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, quite often and rightly raises—the question of the apparent persecution of, and violence against, the Ahmadiyya community and other Christian communities. All these matters are indeed discussed and were discussed at that very helpful forum between the European Union and the Indonesian Government on 5 May.

[Lord Liddle]

The whole House will welcome the progress—uneven progress—being made on human rights in West Papua, and on human rights in the rest of Indonesia, and will welcome Indonesia’s joining of the UN Human Rights Council, but what positive progress is being made under the EU-Indonesia dialogue? What active support are the British Government giving, particularly in terms of ministerial visits such as that of Mr Jeremy Browne last year to Indonesia? How do the Government balance their proper concern for human rights with their present emphasis on expanding UK trade in emerging markets such as Indonesia?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The answer to the noble Lord’s general question is that we do balance. In many cases, one would argue that the two go together. If we can get expanded commercial and economic activity, effective inward investment and the expansion of trade, this will pave the way for a more open society and a more effective policing of human rights.

Results are a bit difficult to measure. All that can be said is that there is a human rights dialogue between the European Union and Indonesia. We support it fully. Our evidence in this increasingly transparent world is: first, that it is getting more difficult for any country that wishes to oppose and repress human rights to do so; secondly, that we intend to try to make it more difficult for them to do so; and thirdly, that the Indonesian state, whose territorial integrity we fully support, is anxious to carry forward and sensibly settle this and other human rights issues in a good and constructive way.

South Sudan

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:43

Asked By

[Lord Avebury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the current situation in Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces in the context of the Republic of South Sudan’s independence.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)]

My Lords, we remain deeply concerned by the continuing violence and humanitarian situation in Southern Kordofan. We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and full humanitarian access. We fully welcome the Framework Agreement on Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan, signed in Addis Ababa under African Union auspices, as a step in the right direction, but this needs to be implemented and followed up. We also welcome the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1990 which, together with the signing of an Abyei interim agreement, paves the way for a swift withdrawal of Sudanese armed forces from Abyei and the deployment of Ethiopian peacekeeping troops under a UN mandate.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, my noble friend did not mention the UNMIS report, which has not been published, on the regime’s devastating attacks on the Nuba people in these three territories and, particularly, in South Kordofan where Ahmed Haroun, the governor after a disputed election, is wanted by the ICC for war crimes. Does my noble friend agree that the UN decision to send a mere 4,200 troops to Abyei and none to South Kordofan is woefully inadequate in the face of an incipient genocide of the Nuba people in the whole region? Will the UK remind the Security Council that the responsibility to protect applies in these territories to a far greater extent than it did in Libya?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend is right to point to the reports of atrocities. I think he is referring to the report initiated by the UN Mission in South Sudan and these regions, which makes very grim reading indeed. As far as we understand its contents, it is extremely worrying. In fact, my honourable friend the Under-Secretary of State, Mr Bellingham, who, incidentally, is in Sudan at this moment, was at the United Nations a few days ago and urged that the report should be put to the UN Security Council for full consideration. We are fully aware of that aspect of things. As to sending more troops, the problem at the moment is, as my noble friend knows, that the Khartoum Government are trying to veto any further extension of the UN troop mandate of the UNMIS mandate. That has to be overcome, and it is not easy for the United Nations to begin to meet the security needs through adequate troop provision by the UN over and above the Ethiopian mission I have already mentioned.

[Baroness Cox]

My Lords, when I was in Juba last week for the joyful celebrations of the independence of the peoples of the south, I had the opportunity to meet leaders from Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. They all expressed grave concern over President al-Bashir’s stated policy of turning the Republic of Sudan into an Arab Islamic state. What is Her Majesty's Government’s assessment of al-Bashir’s policies with regard to the ethnic and religious minorities in those areas of the Republic of Sudan and, indeed, in all the Republic of Sudan?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The assessment we have is based on the wisdom and experience of the noble Baroness and on the visit of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary to Juba 10 days ago for the independence celebrations. Our assessment is not at all encouraging. There is a clear attempt to use extremely violent methods and to carry them out in South Kordofan, the Blue Nile area and the Nuba mountains where some horrific things have gone on. This is not at all encouraging. President al-Bashir has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court. The pattern that has been pursued is a mixture. At least he did turn up at the celebrations in Juba, which was a positive act, and one hopes that more positive aspects will appear, but at the moment, there is not much sign of them.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

I wish to return to the leaked UN documents. The report states that 73,000 people have been displaced and that 7,000 people who were not taken into the compound have disappeared. The situation has been described as resembling Srebrenica. There are aerial photographs of mass graves. So why has the UN remained silent about such disturbing evidence? As a member of the Security Council, what exactly is the United Kingdom doing when a sovereign Government in Khartoum are refusing to allow anyone to investigate what is happening and are continuing to obstruct essential humanitarian aid to the very needy people of South Kordofan?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Baroness is right and reinforces what I was saying a moment ago. This report is extremely worrying and full of evidence of really serious atrocities. She has further elaborated and underlined that. The question is what the UN agencies, UNMIS itself and the reporting authorities are going to do about it. I have to tell the noble Baroness that as far as the British Government and my honourable friend Mr Bellingham, who was at the United Nations, are concerned, our urging has been that this report should go forward to the Security Council and be fully discussed in the light of the grim and terrible reports that it contains. That is the position so far. I cannot tell the noble Baroness exactly what is going to happen next or how it will be handled, but that is HMG’s position on the matter.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, on the report that the noble Lord has referred to and which I sent him a copy of yesterday, he will recall that two weeks ago I sent him a report from Kadugli where UNMIS soldiers themselves were responsible for handing over people who were seeking refuge in the refugee camp there—“like lambs to the slaughter”, according to a witness. What does this tell us about the nature of peacekeeping in Southern Sudan and of the UNMIS force itself? Are we intending to refer these crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court, not least because of the thousands of people who are trapped in the Nuba mountains and suffering from aerial bombardment?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I can only repeat what I said earlier. The noble Lord very kindly sent me a copy of this report, as did a number of other people. As I have already said twice, it makes very grim reading. The noble Lord has rightly raised the quality and behaviour of existing UN troops a number of times. Of course we are worried that there was inadequate behaviour or that troops stood aside while people were dragged from their cars and shot, and so on. We have encouraged the Under-Secretary-General at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to examine these claims very carefully and to bear them very strongly in mind when and—I regret to say—if a new mandate can be agreed and established for UN forces after independence, the original UNMIS mandate having finished. This is a very serious issue and one which we are watching very closely indeed.

East Jerusalem and the West Bank

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:51

Asked By

[Lord Hylton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will ask the Government of Israel to return to its original owners expropriated land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank which has not been developed or is used only for military training.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord will know from my reply on 16 June, we are very concerned about Israel’s policies on developing settlements. It is Britain’s long-standing policy that settlements are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace. During his recent visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, my honourable friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Alistair Burt, stressed the need for the parties to return to negotiations on the basis of parameters set out by President Obama in his speech on 19 May—that is, the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, as well as security arrangements that protect Israel and respect Palestinian sovereignty.

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. Does he accept that my Question is a modest attempt to prevent new facts on the ground being created in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which are bound to pre-empt the negotiations that he mentions? Are we not already faced with a single-state situation, with Bantustans in Ramallah and Gaza, and will the quartet act positively to redress the most unequal balance?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The quartet, alas, in its recent meetings found itself unable to establish even enough agreement for a statement, so this indicates the continuing difficulty, tensions and disagreements underlying this whole scene. The noble Lord is absolutely right about the creation of facts on the ground, which are obviously an obstacle to a return to negotiations and a serious impediment to the long-term prospects for peace. It is particularly concerning that the building of settlements and these demolition programmes in East Jerusalem, which are illegal, are continuing, particularly the very provocative building and demolition operations going on in the Sheikh Jarrah district. I have to agree with the noble Lord, but these are matters that we keep raising with the Israeli authorities. These are not just UK matters; they concern all countries that want to advance the peace process, including of course the United States.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, the noble Lord said that Mr Burt raised the hope of the United Kingdom Government that there would be negotiations, but he was not explicit about how the Israelis responded. He has implied negativity but has not been explicit. Can he explicitly tell your Lordships’ House what the Israelis did say in response, and, if it was negative, does the noble Lord really believe that there is any realistic possibility of negotiations with a Netanyahu-led Government?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I was not explicit because, as the noble Baroness will know—she is better equipped than most of us in these sorts of areas—what one often gets when making representations that are not welcome to the recipients is a shrug of the shoulders and a polite nodding of the head but no action. I am afraid that the most visible action is of the opposite kind—buildings have continued to be demolished, which gives rise to a question about the prospects for progress.

No one can disguise the fact that most of the responsible world—the Arab world, the western world, the European Union, the United States, the UN—believes that the present fluidity and turmoil in the region provides an opportunity for Israel and a Palestine that we hope is moving towards a united Government, although it is not there yet, to start serious negotiations. That is what we want, but it has to be said that this has appeared not to be the opinion of the Israeli authorities at the moment. Their inclination appears to be just to hunker down and hope that something else will turn up.

It is not a situation in which we are optimistic. None the less, we think that continual pressure and the continuing presentation of the realities of the destructive path on which an Israel that refused to negotiate would set itself will eventually move things, but I cannot pretend that it will happen tomorrow morning.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, my noble friend made much of the fact that the Minister declared that the settlements were illegal under international law, but is my noble friend aware that if the Minister had gone further and said that there might therefore be a case for materials produced in those settlements to be boycotted, he would be in breach of the new anti-boycott law which the Knesset introduced on 11 July? What is Her Majesty's Government’s response to the introduction of that law? Does my noble friend agree that it seriously undermines not only freedom of speech in Israel but even Israel’s credentials as an open, free and democratic society?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I myself—and I think this would be a government view—do not very much like the shape of the boycott law, which seems to intrude very greatly on the freedom even of speech about what can be traded and developed in the relevant areas. However, I understand that the matter will come before the Israeli Supreme Court and has been challenged, so maybe it is premature to make final judgments on it. Generally, we think that boycotts are not the way forward—they impede the sensible development of trade—and we should perhaps not forget that, although much of what I have had to say is gloomy, trade and activity, not in Jerusalem but elsewhere on the West Bank, are developing really rather well, and many people, including in your Lordships' House, are well aware of some of the remarkable enterprises that are springing up in places such as Ramallah and elsewhere.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal]

My Lords, do Her Majesty's Government believe that there should be no return of land until there is a final settlement? The noble Lord will know that that statement was made back in 1967. Is that still the view of Her Majesty's Government today?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I think the noble and learned Baroness is aware that this question has come up very recently in discussion. I believe that that statement was made by a former Foreign Secretary, George Brown MP, many years ago after the 1967 war and the Israelis’ occupation of the West Bank after they were attacked. I do not believe that it forms part of the entirely new and fluid situation that has developed long since then, or of the new realities that we have to face in moving to negotiation. I will check the precise legal status of that statement, which was valid all those years ago, but I do not think it is at all relevant to the way in which we want to go now.

[Lord Eden of Winton]

My Lords, are not the attitude and policy of the Administration of the United States of America key to a resolution of these matters? Can my noble friend say whether they are pressing as hard as Her Majesty's Government are?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend is right to say that the influence of the United States on the situation is major, although it may not be absolutely as final as it is sometimes argued. The European Union has its role and individual nations have theirs. The United Kingdom continues to be able to play an influential role and maybe could do even more. But obviously if the United States is not, as it were, on side, little progress will be made. We all hope that the very fine speech made by President Obama indicates the way he wants to go and that he is allowed to go that way. However, we would be blind if we did not recognise that there are formidable political forces in the United States which seem to stand in the way of sensible progress on this issue.

Finance: Eurozone

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

15:00

Asked By

[Lord Barnett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had with other European Union Finance Ministers about financial problems in the eurozone.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, the Chancellor of the Exchequer regularly discusses the situation in the euro area with his European Union colleagues, including in bilateral meetings and at the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. The most recent ECOFIN meeting on 12 July, which the Chancellor attended, covered the situation in the euro area, and a number of previous ECOFIN meetings have also discussed this. The Treasury continues closely to monitor financial developments in the euro area.

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, the Chancellor was quoted as saying—I hope that the noble Lord does not mind me quoting him—that they should try to obtain a settlement whereby banks are more heavily capitalised. That was a very sensible suggestion, although it might be difficult to achieve. I hope that the noble Lord is not complacent that, if the crisis really hits the eurozone, simply because we are not in the scheme we will be all right since it will not cost us any euros. We would not have to bail out European banks, but we would have to bail out UK banks that got into serious trouble. Does he accept that it would be sensible for the Chancellor to be much more positive about trying to achieve a deal? Indeed, if he can get a sustainable deal that is recognised internationally, he should go as far providing guarantees because that would be a sensible move which would safeguard UK taxpayers from tens if not billions of euros.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the Government are not the least complacent about the very serious situation in the eurozone, as evidenced by not only the continuing discussions around the next stage of the programme for Greece but also the situation of Italy as regards the capital markets and its interest rates recently. The most constructive things we can do are, first, to make sure, as the FSA and the Bank of England are doing, that the UK banks are subjected to stringent stress tests; and secondly that they continue to build up, as they have done satisfactorily so far, their capital liquidity positions. In his discussions with the eurozone, my right honourable friend the Chancellor has made it quite clear how supportive the UK is not only of the short-term measures in which we are not directly involved—the Eurogroup discussions around Greece—but also through ensuring that Europe presses ahead with the structural adjustments that are needed to bring sustained growth to Europe. At the same time, we also make it abundantly clear that it is for the eurozone itself to finance further bailouts and that the UK, as has been agreed in the context of Greece, is not going to be a direct participant in these bailouts.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, is it not clear, as the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has pointed out, that while we all obsess about Rupert Murdoch and News International, there is a much more serious crisis actually brewing on the European continent? Is it not clear that two paths are open to the eurozone? One is to recognise a default by Greece now; or if that is judged too risky to the banking sector, for the eurozone then to come up with what it has always promised, which is to do whatever is necessary to stop the bickering among the 17 Governments, to stop the arguments for the European Central Bank and to come up now with a comprehensive solution rather than delay it until the autumn, which will be immensely damaging to Italy and not least to other countries both inside and outside the eurozone?

[Lord Sassoon]

I certainly agree with my noble friend about the relative seriousness of different crises that are going on at the moment, and I repeat that the crisis in the eurozone is extremely serious. As to prescriptions and questions about what the eurozone would do, my noble friend speaks words of wisdom. However, it would not be appropriate for a UK government Minister to lecture the eurozone as to what to do. We shall look with considerable interest at what the meeting of eurozone leaders over the next two days comes up with. It is important that they make further considerable progress.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords—

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that some of us do not believe in exaggerating the problems of the eurozone or using the word “crisis”, which is immensely damaging and should not be used by Her Majesty's Government? Is he aware that, overall, the eurozone has been a great success? A vast amount of eurozone paper is held willingly throughout the world and ever more trade is being carried out in euros. Is it not about time that Her Majesty's Government took at long last a more positive attitude both to the eurozone and to Europe in general?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, we take as a Government a very positive and pragmatic attitude towards Europe and the eurozone. It is after all where 40 per cent or more of the UK’s exports go. We wish the eurozone success. In the ways that I have sketched out and we have discussed on other occasions, we will be supportive, particularly on completing the single market and putting in place structural reforms. At the same time, it is right for countries to make their decision as to whether they want to be in or out, and the UK has made and continues to make the right decision about where we are.

Armed Forces Bill

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Order of Consideration Motion

15:07

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That it be an instruction to the Grand Committee to which the Armed Forces Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 14, Schedule 1, Clauses 15 to 26, Schedule 2, Clauses 27 to 29, Schedule 3, Clause 30, Schedules 4 and 5, Clauses 31 to 34.

Motion agreed.

Renewable Heat Incentive (Amendment to the Energy Act 2008) Regulations 2011

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Renewable Heat Incentive Regulations 2011

Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Access to Infrastructure) Regulations 2011

Disclosure of State Pension Credit Information (Warm Home Discount) Regulations 2011

Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

Motions to Approve

Moved by

[Lord Marland]

That the draft regulations laid before the House on 13, 20 and 23 June be approved.

Relevant documents: 24th and 25th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 12 July.

Motions agreed.

Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Motion to Agree

Moved by

[The Chairman of Committees]

That the 6th Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 170) be agreed to.

Motion agreed.

Localism Bill

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (9th Day)

15:08

Clause 100 : Use of Community Infrastructure Levy

Amendment 148ZZC

Tabled by

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

148ZZC: Clause 100, page 79, line 20, at end insert—
“( ) In section 209 (liability: interpretation of key terms) after subsection (8) (regulations may make provision for a person not to be treated as a developer in specified circumstances) insert—
“(9) CIL regulations must provide for an exemption (or a partial exemption) from liability to pay CIL in respect of a development where the person who would otherwise be likely to pay CIL in respect of the development is already required to make payment of a sum or sums under a planning obligation under section 106 of TCPA 1990 which is or are applied towards—
(a) existing infrastructure (within the meaning given in section 216(1)), or(b) other existing local infrastructure or matters relating to that infrastructure.””

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Not moved.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, perhaps I may say that today’s list has a target set at Amendment 170CD—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, might I intervene? It is customary, if one wishes to ask general questions, to do so on the Motion that House do now go into Committee. Last week, Back-Benchers involved in this Bill showed a willingness to move on and to debate the Bill, and not to argue about how it should be arrived at by particular times. Announcements were made. Might I suggest that if the Chief Whip of the Opposition has anything to say, he has the courtesy to have discussions with me first outside the Chamber? If he wishes to proceed now, of course that is his right. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding was supposed to be moving an amendment. I remind the House that it is the normal courtesy to give notice that one wishes to say something on going into Committee. The noble Lord decided not to do so. If he has changed his mind and wants to do it in a different way, it would be helpful to the House if it knew what procedure was to be followed.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

My Lords, I am normally very courteous in your Lordships’ House and I do not wish to trespass on its time. I am more than happy to have discussions outside the Chamber—that would be preferable—but I draw to the attention of the House that the Government have set a target of 29 amendments. The House is due to rise at 10 o’clock this evening and, with it sitting again at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning, your Lordships will wish to know that that permits, on my calculation, only 12 minutes per group of amendments, and some of the groups contain as many as 40 amendments. We are, of course, more than ready to try to make progress on the Bill. It is a serious Bill containing serious matters and the House needs to give all the issues serious and proper consideration. I hope that the House will support that approach— that is how we usually proceed—but, if we cannot reach that target by 10 o’clock this evening, I hope that we will adjourn at 10 o’clock because noble Lords need to come back tomorrow refreshed to carry on with urgent and proper business.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I am grateful to the noble Lord the Opposition Chief Whip for saying that the Opposition are keen to make progress. We on this side of the House are also keen to make progress. These are preliminary discussions and we will certainly listen to all the debates as they proceed because all Members who have amendments down consider them to be important. The Back-Benchers said again and again last week that they want to get on with scrutiny of the Bill. Let my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding have his moment to do just that.

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)]

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said “not moved” in relation to Amendment 148ZZC. I do not want to take his moment away from him.

Amendment 148ZZC not moved.

Amendments 148ZZCA to 148ZZD not moved.

Clause 100 agreed.

Clause 101 : Neighbourhood planning

Amendment 148ZZE had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendment 148ZZZEA

Moved by

[Lord True]

148ZZZEA: Clause 101, Page 80, line 38, at end insert—
“( ) Where a local authority has a scheme or process of neighbourhood engagement and localised planning that promotes and enables the involvement of the residents and businesses of its area, within their local neighbourhoods, and that process has been agreed by the Secretary of State to—
(a) meet the objectives set out in section 61F, 5(a)(i) and (ii) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as amended by Schedule 9 to this Act; and(b) constitute a sufficient process of local engagement to enable the making of neighbourhood development orders and neighbourhood plans on the basis of informed involvement and consent,that local authority may make such orders or plans on behalf of local residents without the establishment of neighbourhood forums or the holding of a referendum.”

[Lord True]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 148AZZF. We are approaching a critical new section of the Bill and I want to underline that I do not seek to challenge the concept of neighbourhood planning or public participation in it—both are absolutely essential. They have been agreed in Committee and so I could not support amendments which seek to remove reference to neighbourhood forums in any circumstances. However, I oppose a straitjacket being placed on local authorities in relation to how they should go about neighbourhood planning.

The Local Government Association has written to many noble Lords saying that the Bill adds unwanted levels of bureaucracy and Whitehall interference that threaten to squeeze the life out of a fluid, flexible and localist system that is currently in operation. I would not go as far as that but I believe that in its present form the Bill could delay effective neighbourhood planning in many places as much as it accelerates it.

Amendment 148ZZEA is clearly defective in its drafting. It was drafted in this way in order not to leap ahead of another amendment that was later withdrawn. However, I hope its purpose is clear and that the Committee will be able to support its principles. They are that there should be an expectation of every local authority to have satisfactory arrangements for neighbourhood planning and that those arrangements must be approved by the Secretary of State. If those arrangements do not exist—I repeat, do not exist—the ideas set out in Schedules 9 and 10 could have effect. In other words, it seeks to replace a one-size-fits-all approach regulated from the top towards neighbourhood planning with a more open public service framework that enables a range of different local approaches to neighbourhood planning which are suited to different local circumstances. Under a framework like this, a recalcitrant authority that is not involving its local people as it should can still be obliged to do so, albeit with the rather cumbersome machinery laid out in the Bill.

My view is that good local authorities can be trusted to, and encouraged to, trust and involve local people in planning their futures. It has been a frequent thread in this Committee that the Bill’s approach seems too often based on the view that local authorities cannot be trusted and must be made to operate centrally designed systems. We had that in the section on the community right to bid where a sensible backstop system to protect key community facilities became transformed in the writing of the Bill into a potential engine of bureaucracy.

I was moved to put down this amendment after entertaining dozens of dedicated local authority workers who had given up Saturday after Saturday and much other of their spare time to help our local communities in working up neighbourhood plans. One of those local authority officers—with a lot of justifiable pride in her case because she had done more than most—said to me, “It has been a great experience. People want to take part. They welcome it so much. It is so rewarding to be breaking new ground”. Of course, she was right, although our authority is far from alone. The Local Government Association brief gives us many other examples of innovative activity right across the country. People want more say in local planning and the Bill’s instincts are right. The Government’s interest in it is welcome but—this is a big but—why must it be presumed to be done only in the elaborate way in the schedules to this part of the Bill?

As I have said before, more than 15,000 people have taken part in our neighbourhood planning process. I think the assumption should be that every citizen and business in a village or neighbourhood should be involved in the process, which is why in my other amendment in this group, Amendment 148AZZF, I suggest that the default position should be that all people should be involved in deciding who forms a neighbourhood forum. That is also the effect of Amendment 148AZZFA and other amendments from my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Greaves. Why should it not be the case for all local people, supported and facilitated by a good local authority, and not a selected few—as few as 21 people in this Bill—who may well claim to represent their area but could well be representative of only part of competing local opinions? Why those few and not others? Is not everyone’s voice equal in matters affecting their own area? Indeed, you could argue that good neighbourhood planning should reach beyond established local pressure groups and amenity bodies, which already have a voice, and not go through them.

I ask my noble friends to consider allowing different approaches, without the need for forums or potentially costly referendums in every case. I am not challenging the basic structure of the backstop in the Bill but I am asking for a more permissive approach. Some may say that we have to legislate for all local authorities in the same way. I profoundly disagree with that. As I said at Second Reading, good community engagement and good local planning should be spontaneous and flexible, even anarchic. One size fits all will choke those qualities and good local planning should enable variety from place to place. Surely, the whole idea of localism is that diversity should be encouraged.

While I freely acknowledge that the words of my amendment may not be right, I hope that between now and Report the Government will give active and serious consideration to the approach that I am suggesting: namely, to have an overriding expectation of local authorities to carry out neighbourhood planning but to do it in a way that liberates and supports existing innovation and fits their own area, and for the Government to have powers in reserve to require the same spirit of community engagement from those other authorities which are not as complying as local people might wish. That would be real localism.

I have views about many aspects of neighbourhood planning that are covered in this group but, in the interests of making progress, I will leave it there for now, as other noble Lords have amendments. However, I cannot sit down without at least welcoming the intent behind Amendment 148AA, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hanham, and others in the group which accept points made at Second Reading that an unelected neighbourhood forum, once set up, should not be untouchable for five years, as it is in the Bill. I am a little disappointed in the briefing being circulated that says the removal of a forum’s designation should be a rare occurrence. I do not see why a fixed set of people should remain in place for five years, unelected, when an elected council can be removed after four years. However, the acceptance that a forum may be disbanded, replenished or renewed is welcome. It represents an excellent first step away from some of the rigidities built into this part of the Bill. I thank my noble friend for that and I only hope that we can tempt my noble friends further. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

I start by agreeing with pretty much everything that the noble Lord, Lord True, has just said. I have more than a few amendments in this group—I will speak generally and raise the questions they bring up rather than go through them individually.

Liberal Democrats are supportive of and excited by the concept of neighbourhood planning but we have two practical criteria to apply to this Bill. First, we want it to work; and secondly, we want it to work in the interest of local communities. We are not sure that the Bill as it stands does that. We are into a new world—a new architecture—of a new neighbourhood planning system based on neighbourhood areas and on authorised and qualifying bodies to carry out planning functions in these areas, which may be parish councils; or, in unparished areas, neighbourhood forums. These bodies can make neighbourhood development orders and neighbourhood plans. This is quite revolutionary stuff.

I will indicate my recent experience of neighbourhood planning at this stage. In recent years I have been involved, as a local councillor, in several master-planning exercises under the housing market renewal programme in east Lancashire, involving consultation with and participation by local residents and businesses in areas of Victorian terraced housing and local industry. I was also a member of the Whitefield Regeneration Partnership in a similar, but mainly Asian heritage, area in Nelson with special conservation status that started with an inquiry-by-design process run by the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment. I was a member of the partnership board which was chaired by my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland.

Issues and questions raised by our amendments include the designation of neighbourhood forums. We question the concept in the new Section 61F(5)(a)(ii) of the Town and Country Planning Act of a neighbourhood forum set up solely for,

“promoting the carrying on of trades, professions or other businesses”.

There is a government amendment to this effect. The question is whether this will mean businesses giving themselves planning permission via a neighbourhood development order. What is the role of residents—both those living in the area, however few they may be, or residents living just outside the area, who may be many—who may be affected by nuisances caused and decisions made?

My noble friend Lord True has already referred to the membership of neighbourhood forums. We are concerned that their membership must be inclusive and their internal processes democratic, so that everyone who lives in the area and all councillors representing the area can take part in neighbourhood planning, and to make sure that the forums are representative of all social and geographical parts of the local community. Similar amendments deal with this issue. This is a central issue for us in this part of the Bill. It is absolutely crucial that we do not end up with neighbourhood forums that are run by a local clique for their own particular purposes. In what ways does the Bill guarantee this? What extra prescribed conditions for possible designation of an organisation or body as a neighbourhood forum are intended in new Section 61F(6)? In particular will narrow profit-making bodies be allowed to set up as neighbourhood forums? These are crucial matters, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

On parish councils as neighbourhood areas, new Section 61G(3) says in the case of a parish council the specified area,

“must be one that consists of or includes the whole or any part of the area of the council”.

So a neighbourhood area, for neighbourhood planning purposes, can be the area of a parish council or a part of the area of a parish council. Can two or more parish councils combine to form one neighbourhood area? This is an obvious question in relation to small parish councils that are simply not big enough to do the job on their own. And what happens in areas that only have parish meetings?

Neighbourhood development orders effectively give planning permission outside the normal system. We will be talking about these orders quite lot in the coming hours. What can be done to create democratic legitimacy in areas without parish councils? Is there not a serious democratic deficit if self-appointed neighbourhood forums are able to make neighbourhood development orders and indeed neighbourhood plans? This is a critical issue for us—the democratic deficit at the neighbourhood level in areas that are unparished. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, my Amendment 148AZZC relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has been saying, which I generally support, but is much narrower. It reflects concerns shared by the Royal Town Planning Institute and relates entirely to the purpose of setting up a neighbourhood forum, and hence making a neighbourhood plan.

At Report in another place, the Government amended subsection (5)(a) of new Section 61F so that an organisation can be designated as a neighbourhood forum if,

“it is established expressly for either or both of the following purposes—

(i) furthering the social, economic and environmental well-being of individuals”—

I abbreviate a bit—and,

“(ii) promoting the carrying on of trades, professions or other businesses”.

There was very little discussion of the government amendment in the other place.

The purport of “either or both” is that the neighbourhood forum and any consequent neighbourhood plan could be set up purely with the sole purpose of carrying on trades, professions or other businesses. There is no reason for that not to be one of the purposes, but government guidance and most ideas of planning take account of economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development. A neighbourhood plan should surely not address one activity alone.

The Government may want to think again and adopt something along the lines of my amendment, which makes it clear that the purpose of the neighbourhood forum is to further the social, economic and environmental well-being of the residents, including carrying on businesses if need be, but would not allow this at the expense of the other factors.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have five amendments in this group and will deal with them extremely briefly, because they are really all addressed to the same issue. I do not find at all clear the relationship between a neighbourhood area that may consist wholly or largely of residential properties and one that has an established business in it. My noble friend has tabled a very important group of amendments to establish that there can be neighbourhood business areas. That is certainly a very considerable advance. But when one is dealing, as one does in Schedule 9, with definitions of bodies that can be neighbourhood areas and areas that they can cover, can that include a neighbourhood area with a business? Can they form a neighbourhood area? Is all that in fact now covered by government Amendment 148AE, which comes in a future group? I and others are not at all clear on what will be the interaction where there are combined communities of businesses and residences. Those must cover a very large part of the country, which might form themselves into neighbourhood areas. I get the impression that the Bill has been designed on the assumption that they are all going to be residential properties, when of course they are not. They may well be small businesses as well. It would be very helpful if my noble friend could indicate how these can work together and form a neighbourhood area.

I disagree with my noble friend Lord Greaves—we are moving into an entirely different area here. Quite a lot of local plans have developed around the country, and I will not weary the Committee by reading out a list of them. It seems important that if one is going to have all this new bureaucracy to try to surround this whole area, which is what we are getting in the Bill, the question is whether it can be made to work as successfully as quite a lot of the local plans have been working. I entirely support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord True, but if my noble friend on the Front Bench can give us some indication of how the various components of what a neighbourhood plan would be can work together, that would be extremely helpful. A number of bodies outside will read her words with very great care.

15:30

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, in what people will no doubt regard as my characteristically generalist way, I rise not to move some clever amendment or ask some difficult questions but simply to express my support for what I take to be the basic thrust of my noble friend Lord True’s amendment, which goes to the heart of one of the tensions in the Bill. This is called the Localism Bill, and it is supposed to promote localism, but all too often we find that localism means what the Secretary of State wants it to mean rather than what people think it means locally. If I am right, I think that my noble friend is saying that there is a risk that the proposed neighbourhood forums—in the case of authorities that do not really want them to work—will simply be formulaic arrangements with box ticking and meetings where they can say who has attended. That is a risk, at any rate; we have all seen it happen. Meanwhile, however, perfectly good working arrangements in authorities such as those of my noble friend are made to be scrapped in favour of doing this other stuff. In other words, if you have a vehicle with four purpose-built wheels that work perfectly well, the Bill would appear to force you to replace them with the Secretary of State’s bog-standard design wheels. I do not see what is to be gained by that. It is not consistent with localism and we need the additional flexibility that my noble friend seeks.

[Baroness Valentine]

I declare an interest as chief executive of London First, a business membership organisation including infrastructure providers in its membership. I support Amendment 148C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, which seeks to exclude development associated with nationally significant infrastructure from the scope of neighbourhood development orders. This refers to infrastructure which gets, or would have got, planning permission via the Planning Act 2008.

A signal box next to a railway track is perhaps a good example. It may not constitute nationally significant infrastructure in the sense that the track does, but the signal box is integral to the running of the railway. If a neighbourhood plan had the ability to set land-use planning policy for the area containing the signal box, the plans could affect the running of the railway. It is therefore important that in drawing up neighbourhood plans and the associated development orders, development that is ancillary but integral to the working of nationally significant infrastructure is excluded from the scope of neighbourhood planning.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord True, in expressing some concern about the relationship of the various amendments and clauses that will ultimately emerge, particularly in relation to neighbourhood development areas and business areas—if I might use that shorthand term. It seems that we could have a situation in which, under the later amendment that the noble Baroness will be moving, a business area could be declared on the basis that it is wholly or predominantly a business area, which sort of makes sense, I suppose. However, another amendment refers to a situation in which there might be two referendums in the same area because there is a business area and a neighbourhood development area, which implies that it is not just a business area, or that there is some sort of overlap.

I think of a situation in the ward I represent where you have a business area—a shopping street—on either side of which there are two distinct residential communities, both of which regard the shopping area as common, as it were. However, each has its own separate issues which might encourage it—this would no doubt be welcome—to seek area status in a development forum for each residential side of the road, as it were. I do not see how this fits together, particularly having regard to Amendments 148ZA and 148ZB, which the Minister will move later. I mention this at this stage to give her a little time to think, or be advised about, the relationship between these issues. It seems to me that this could lead to considerable confusion because, on the one hand, business areas are supposed to stand alone whereas, on the other hand, other parts of the Bill suggest that they will not stand alone. You might then have competing neighbourhood forums sharing, as it were, a business area. It would be helpful to have elucidation of this rather complex situation and how it might work on the ground as I fear that it will confuse rather than clarify the situation for those occupiers—be they residential or business occupiers—who want to progress with the development of a plan for the area as they see it.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree. Good existing relationships ought to be encouraged but where they do not exist the idea that we should have to go the whole hog and create neighbourhoods as set out in the Bill will be a very difficult thing to do, particularly in cities. Where I come from in Hampshire, localism at present consists of the parish council saying, “We’d like this”, and the district council ignoring it. Therefore, I look forward to the full variety of localism down in Hampshire. However, I understand that Richmond may well be a happier and more coherent place under my noble friend’s management. Certainly when it comes to cities, as we will see in some of my later amendments, I very much support the idea that there should be a proper recognition of what you might call interim, less formal neighbourhood arrangements than are set out in the Bill. Beyond anything else, they will be a great deal easier to manage and a great deal less expensive. If the local community can get what it wants without having to go through the whole process of putting a plan together, agreeing it, having it inspected and going out to referendum, but can just do it by means of conversations with councillors and local meetings, that seems to me entirely preferable.

As regards some of the points raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves, I say go for parishes. We have a well set-out system in an Act passed by the previous Government to enable parishes to be created in urban areas. If you use that, you will have the democratic structure you are looking for.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, having listened to the other speeches that have been made on amendments in this grouping, it is clear that this is a thoroughly valuable grouping. I am speaking to Amendment 148AZZA, which was prompted by the Heritage Alliance. I was prompted by the UK Association of Preservation Trusts and the Heritage of London Trust. The amendment is supported by a rainbow alliance in all four corners of the Chamber. This has had one slightly untoward consequence in that, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and I have waited on about four different occasions over the past 10 days to move this amendment, he eventually ran out of time and asked me if I would take over the gist of his speech. That was a helpful and constructive suggestion, except that I have mislaid the merged article. There will therefore be a slight quality of improvisation to my remarks.

The heritage sector has been arguing for a local approach for the past 11 years, since the publication of Power of Place in 2000—a report that was facilitated by English Heritage and represented the views of a wide part of the heritage sector. It was followed by A Force for Our Future, published by the DCMS and the then the DTLR, which included the observation:

“There is a very large body of research that demonstrates the great economic sense of conservation-led regeneration. As stated by the Government, ‘policy-makers need to regard the historic environment as a unique economic asset, a generator of wealth and jobs in both urban and rural areas’”.

That report was followed in 2004 by Recharging the Power of Place: Valuing Local Significance, published by the National Trust, the CPRE and Heritage Link—which underpins what is now the Heritage Alliance as a whole.

Heritage is a limited resource, and international organisations such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites, once remarkably led by the late Bernard Feilden, recognise it as a fourth component of sustainable development. When the Prime Minister, on 23 November last year, made his speech on the Government’s agenda for well-being, he indicated that the historic environment was a major contribution to people’s sense of well-being. Power of Place research by MORI showed that people consider that,

“the historic environment represents the place in which they live”.

Power of Place and successive reports have had an important effect on the way in which the historic environment is perceived as being local as well as national.

The heritage sector is concerned to achieve a balanced approach to public and private financing of neighbourhood development plans and orders. The Government’s emphasis on economic growth as their particular imperative is totally understood, and is to be welcomed and supported. However, heritage is not a psychological addiction or obsession; it has a practical perspective in these matters.

When I began subscribing to life membership of the various heritage societies some 40 years ago, I recall the chief planning officer of the City of Bath, when criticised for the fact that he had caused to be knocked down a large number of Georgian artisan dwellings, said that he would be happy not to have done so if the city fathers had provided him with a number of Georgian artisans to occupy them, and that since they were not available the redevelopment had to occur. In Northern Ireland, planning regulations were massively relaxed during the Troubles, simply as a stimulus to economic activity. I therefore recognise that there are occasions when you have to eliminate some of the rigour that you would normally have.

However, in the past 25 years, both the Landmark Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund, in the money that they have poured into the infrastructure of our heritage, have created a great deal of enjoyment and pleasure, as well as constructive economic activity. The churches are a superb exposition of the development of the British, especially English, vernacular tradition in which our heritage has unrolled harmoniously over the centuries. The essence of the amendment to which I am speaking on behalf of the Heritage Alliance is to make sure that there is a consideration of cultural well-being in addition to the considerations that the Government have placed in the Bill.

15:45

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I have no brief from anyone, but I declare an interest in that I am chairman of a very small chamber of commerce. My comments come from my professional experience, and I speak in support of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord True, who seems to me to have asked a fundamental question about how the decision-making process unfolds which will be of particular importance to our unparished urban areas. A considerable while ago, the Government of the day introduced a class B1 use into the planning system in a town and country planning use classes order. One characteristic of class B1 was that it was intended to be compatible with a residential activity. We all know that urban centres are not segregated, with residential here, shopping there and industrial in some other place—yes, if it is a modern, purpose-built, designed from scratch settlement, but in places that have evolved over many centuries we do not start from there in the majority of cases.

So uses are cheek by jowl with each other. Residents in flats in inner-city areas, some of which may be quite smart and sought after, do not like the sound of bins being emptied in the wee hours of the morning when the local hotel waste has to be taken out or the shop bins cleared from a service yard. We need to bear in mind that in the same areas, there are late-night activities associated with their economic well-being. I can think of many inner-city areas where there are flats, offices, shops and nightclubs that open into the wee hours of the morning and, yes, the odd rowdy drunk being turfed out in the early hours with much noise to boot.

The noble Lord, Lord True, talked about the danger of trying to find a “one size fits all” solution. There is no one size that can be made to work; there is no common template. Where does that leave us? I think it means that powers have to be in place at local level so that the appropriate measures can be brokered to suit the circumstances that arise. We do not know what that mix will be.

I learnt a salutary lesson many years ago about the creeping effects of urbanisation. It related to a town which I shall not name where, over the years, the post-war industrial area, with its rather small, tatty and relatively substandard buildings, had progressively been encroached on by redevelopment which involved the construction of residential properties. Because it was in an area where companies commonly operate 24 hours a day in one shape or form, every time there was a planning application to build an extension, replace something or do anything that required planning consent, a condition was put in about hours of work. Progressively, people in the industrial area found that they were constrained in their hours of work, because no provision had been made to settle the difference between the aspirations of the redeveloped areas turned over to residential use and the pre-existing industrial and commercial activities. If we are not careful, that produces a very unpleasant form of blight and uncertainty that helps no one. There must be local democratic ways to deal with the brokering of such arrangements.

I fear that there is no silver bullet to deal with the issue, but for all sorts of practical reasons I agree with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord True, and others have suggested.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, so as to avoid the risk of upsetting everyone, I promise to be very brief. I want to make a totally different point, having had my attention drawn to it by the amendment of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, with which I have some sympathy. I should like to know—this is in the Bill—how it can be established that a body is expressly for the purposes of,

“furthering the social, economic and environmental well-being of individuals living, or wanting to live, in an area”.

What does that mean? I imagine that everybody would like to live in certain parts of London. Certainly in my county there are villages where everyone would like to live. What does this mean?

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we have Amendments 148AZZD and 148AZB in this group, but before I touch on them perhaps I should say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True. I think that he very much set the tone for this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and others have supported him. We need a system which is flexible, and everyone should not be forced to follow the horrendous bureaucracy included in these provisions.

Our Amendment 148AZZD is consistent with those of my noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lord Whitty and also consistent with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, whose improvisation is always a joy to the Chamber. I very much agree with his addition of the word “cultural” to one of the considerations for well-being. Amendment 148AZZD simply reiterates the point that my noble friend Lady Whitaker made—that there are concerns, particularly expressed by the RTPI, that the inclusion of the words “either or both” could mean that a local plan might be focused only on business and not have the rounded sustainable development approach. I am bound to say that concerns over that are particularly reinforced by anxieties generally that the Government are shifting the definition of sustainable development. We could be reassured on that point if we had sight of the NPPF, which I understand is very close to publication —or it was last week. That may be one point on which the noble Baroness can enlighten us when she comes to respond.

Amendment 148AZB is aligned with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, which has not been spoken to. Frankly, I am not enamoured of our wording but the amendment seeks to ensure that when membership of a neighbourhood forum includes individuals who work in the area, they should, like individuals living there, reflect the type and size of businesses in the area to prevent possible domination by large businesses.

Picking up a little on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, who asked what on earth is meant by “wanting to live” in an area, perhaps the Minister can help us with the definition of neighbourhood forums being open to individuals who work there. What does that mean? Clearly, if someone has a place of work in a particular area and turns up there every day, that is clear cut and straightforward, but what about a jobbing plumber who may spend part of his time working in the area and part not, or a window cleaner who has part of his round in the area and part not? Indeed, what about someone delivering those free newspapers that we get these days? Would they be included as working in the area? What about someone who works on a construction site which may be in existence for two years, possibly when the neighbourhood forum is part-way through its work? Once work is finished on the construction site, do all the workers on it cease to be members of the forum? There are real issues of definition here which simply add to concerns about bureaucracy and we deserve some answers on them.

I turn to some of the other amendments that have been spoken to. As I have indicated, we very much support the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord True, said on his amendment. We obviously support the government amendments which provide the opportunity to withdraw designation from a neighbourhood forum, although how rare that will be remains to be seen. I have indicated that we certainly support the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in adding “cultural” to the requirements.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, took us through some of the democratic deficit in his terms and what needed to be done to try to redress that: forums should be open to all individuals and must have all-elected members. We absolutely support that. He also has Amendment 148AZZJ which says that organisations must have zero or minimal charges. That is important because you could have people squeezed out of membership by someone ratcheting up the charges.

There are a number of detailed points on some of the other amendments but the broad thrust of them is to make these arrangements more democratic and more inclusive. We are certainly supportive of all that. I think that the Government should take this collection of amendments seriously and address the issue of why everyone should be forced down the same route that is prescribed in the Bill when, at the moment, there is good practice which could be developed in other ways by a range of local authorities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions on this immense number of amendments now before us. At the outset, I shall apologise because I know that one or two of them have not been spoken to, but I shall probably reply to them on the basis that I find this system of numbering confusing. Trying to work out my notes against all this ZZZ-ing has been almost impossible. If I overstretch the mark and reply too often or not enough, please forgive me and we shall sort it out at the end.

I think it is reasonable to start with the government amendments. My replies to the other amendments are clustered under various headings, and if I do not respond to them all I shall try to pick up the points that were made.

The government amendments, which are 148AA, 148AB, 148AC, 148AD and 152B, address the issue of what happens if forums fail to continue to meet the conditions and criteria and empower local councils to remove the designation of a forum in these circumstances. That is what noble Lords have pointed to.

Amendments 148ZCA and 148ZMA are intended to remove the ability of neighbourhood forums to bring forward neighbourhood planning proposals. We agree that, where they exist, parish councils will be the appropriate body to bring forward neighbourhood planning proposals. Where parish councils do not exist, we do not think that communities should be prevented from having a say in the future of their areas. Therefore, our proposals for neighbourhood forums are a pragmatic solution with safeguards in place. Those are the government amendments in this part.

Amendment 148ZZZEA, in the name of my noble friend Lord True, would allow local planning authorities to bring neighbourhood development plans and orders into effect. To achieve this, too much of the power to lead on neighbourhood planning, we believe, would be transferred back from the community to be shared with the authority. I know that my noble friend has already set up his own plans and way of operating. I say to him that neighbourhoods do not have to set up forums; if they do not want them, they do not have to have them.

Government Back-Bench Amendment 148C seeks to expand the definition of development which is excluded from neighbourhood planning. A number of noble Lords have raised this issue, which I will talk about in more detail a bit later on. Our position is that we have excluded development types and classes which, due to their scale and complexity, are inappropriate to be given planning permission through a neighbourhood development order. These include nationally significant infrastructure projects and county minerals and waste applications, which are far too big for a neighbourhood to consider. These amendments would constrain the ability of communities to develop detailed, ambitious neighbourhood plans if they choose to do so. We believe that Amendment 148C would inappropriately widen the range of development that is excluded from the scope of neighbourhood planning and thus constrain the ability of communities to develop detailed plans with major-scale proposals if they choose to do so.

16:00

Our neighbourhood planning proposals are founded on the principle that communities should have a greater say in the future of their areas. Government Back-Bench Amendments 148ADB, 148ADC, 148ZC and 148ZD would go against that principle by allowing major infrastructure owners and operators, such as Network Rail or British Gas, to bring forward neighbourhood planning proposals.

Government Back-Bench Amendment 148AZZFB removes the requirement for neighbourhood forums to have a minimum number of members. In response to concerns raised in Committee in the Commons regarding the legitimacy of a neighbourhood forum, especially about the number of members, we amended the Bill to increase the minimum membership requirement for forums from three people to 21 and to ensure that membership is drawn from across the community. This amendment would remove those important safeguards. Our expectation and hope is that a forum of 21 people will not be just a forum of 21 people; the intention is to involve the whole neighbourhood. There will be a leading group in the forum, but it will not be exclusive and cut out other residents who live in the area—after all, it is their area and they need to be talked to. A number of people will bring forward plans and then discuss and consult on them.

Amendments 148AZZJA, 148AZZHA, 148AZZHB, 148AZZH and 148AZA, and opposition Back-Bench Amendment 148AZB, would impose more restrictive requirements that a local planning authority would consider in deciding whether to designate a neighbourhood forum, and consequently the criteria against which prospective forums would be judged. For example, Amendment 148AZZHB would include new criteria for looking at whether the forum's membership is drawn from all sections of the community within the neighbourhood area.

Amendments 148AZZG, 148AZZFA, 148AZZF, 148AZZFAA, 148AZZFAB and 148AZZFAC would change the membership conditions that a group must meet to be a neighbourhood forum. They would require the membership of a prospective neighbourhood forum to include at least one individual who lives, and one who works, in the neighbourhood area, and at least one who is an elected member of a local authority for the area. The effect of these amendments would be to increase the potential for individuals to stop a valid group being designated as a forum by resigning their membership or refusing to join in the first place. We expect all those people to be involved, but to have this laid down would be restrictive and open to potential difficulties.

Amendment 148AZB responds to concerns about business involvement in forums. However, the amendment is unnecessary as provisions in the Bill will mean that local councils should consider the desirability of designating a forum whose membership is drawn from different sections of the community in the area. That would include businesses—and, indeed, small businesses. We consider that there are important safeguards already in the Localism Bill to ensure that neighbourhood forums have an open and inclusive approach to their membership, and we have sought to secure membership across the neighbourhood area and from all sections of the community. The amendments would mean that a very small minority of individuals in a neighbourhood area could frustrate the development of neighbourhood planning proposals by declining to join the neighbourhood forum.

Amendment 148ABZA would debar companies and other bodies that operate for profit from being designated as a neighbourhood forum. Our position is that we do not want to impose any unnecessary restrictions on organisations that want to put themselves forward to create neighbourhood forums. Local planning authorities will have discretion on which body or group to designate as the neighbourhood forum, but we certainly feel that businesses that work in a neighbourhood will have a role to play.

Amendment 148AZZGA seeks to remove the power for a local planning authority to designate as a neighbourhood forum groups or bodies which do not fulfil all the requirements in the Bill, but which meet alternative conditions prescribed by the Secretary of State. This power ensures we can cater for new and changing circumstances without having to amend primary legislation specifically to allow community groups that may have been inadvertently excluded legally to take forward neighbourhood planning in a designated neighbourhood area.

Amendment 148ABZB would remove the restriction that a parish council or neighbourhood forum can bring forward only one set of proposals at a time for neighbourhood development orders. However, we consider this a sensible restriction. The amendment would give rise to a situation where a parish council or neighbourhood forum could submit a plethora of proposals, one after the other, some completely incompatible with others, before any decisions, either at examination or referendum, had been made on earlier ones.

Amendment 148ZN would allow a neighbourhood forum to be designated for a neighbourhood area which includes a part of a parish council area. This would cause confusion and possible duplication as the amendment would create two qualifying bodies in the same neighbourhood area. Where there is a parish council, we believe it is the right body to plan for the neighbourhood. I was asked earlier whether two parish councils could come together to form a neighbourhood area, and the answer is that they can. If I am not right about that, I will come back on it.

Government Back-Bench Amendments 148AZZA and 148AZZE respond to concerns that neighbourhood forums could have a sole purpose of promoting business in an area—certainly, one of the amendments was in relation to that. Amendment 148AZZE would prevent a neighbourhood forum having an express sole purpose of promoting business in an area.

Amendments 148AZZD and 148AZZC also try to limit the opportunity for neighbourhood forums to have an explicit sole purpose which relates to the promotion of business in a neighbourhood area. Amendments 148AZZD and 148AZZC would require neighbourhood forums always to have a purpose related to furthering the well-being of those who live or want to live in the neighbourhood area concerned, regardless of the suitability of this given the local context.

I want to make clear that businesses will not be able to override the interests of residents in neighbourhood planning. Neighbourhood planning is based on building consensus rather than an adversarial approach. The involvement of business in an area that is not a business neighbourhood must help to contribute to that. All forums must be open to those living in the area. In designating a forum, local councils must consider whether the purpose of the forum reflects the character of the area. In a conservation area, you would probably want to see members of conservation societies involved; in an area where there is heritage, you would certainly want to see heritage societies involved; and in a specific business area, you probably want to see somebody from that. In some areas, the forum may wish to focus on the promotion of business in the neighbourhood—for example, in an industrial estate or commercial centre.

Regardless of the forum's purposes, any neighbourhood planning proposals will need to meet the basic conditions for neighbourhood planning, whether it is a business neighbourhood area or a neighbourhood forum. They may include being appropriate in having regard to national policy and being in general conformity with the strategic policies of the local plan. Wherever there is a neighbourhood plan, it has got to be in conformity with the local development plan and with the national planning frameworks, which I have been advised will be ready for consultation soon.

Residents will always be able to have a say in the development of proposals at independent examination and in the referendum at the end of the process. It will be very much in the interest of the neighbourhood forums to see that they have consulted with the people who live in their area and given them an opportunity to comment and be part of what is being proposed. Otherwise, if they put it to a referendum they are not going to win it, which would probably not be quite what they had in mind. Where proposals will affect people living on the periphery of a neighbourhood area, it will be possible for the local authority to extend the referendum area to include those people in the vote.

Amendment 148AZZB would potentially reduce the clarity provided by the Bill about the legitimate purposes of neighbourhood forums. It would allow a forum to be set up with the express purpose of furthering the well-being of individuals with “an interest” in the neighbourhood area concerned. This amendment would counter the Government’s amendments to the Bill at Committee which sought to provide clarity on the legitimate purposes for a neighbourhood forum, in response to opposition concerns.

Amendment 148A would allow neighbourhood forums to be designated in parishes where the parish council has not achieved certain quality standards. We recognise the value of quality standards, such as those provided by the National Association of Local Councils. However, we are not persuaded that they should form a prerequisite for parish councils to undertake neighbourhood forum planning.

Amendment 148ZM removes the ability of parish councils to prepare a neighbourhood plan for anywhere other than an area that is exclusively within their own parish boundaries. The amendment means that parish councils would not be able to prepare a neighbourhood plan for any land that sits just outside their parish boundary. This amendment would remove the ability for parish councils effectively to respond to their communities’ wishes, while also restricting the ability for neighbourhood boundaries to reflect natural neighbourhood boundaries.

Amendment 148ADCA would allow an application for a neighbourhood area to be made by two or more parish councils. I was asked about this earlier on. Our provisions on the designation of neighbourhood areas are very flexible and are designed to respond to local circumstances—for example, to allow larger parishes to be divided into two or more neighbourhood areas. Equally, the neighbourhood area could be extended beyond the parish boundary in the case of a smaller parish and there is nothing to prevent two or more parishes joining together in a single neighbourhood area, with the important condition that all the involved parish councils give their consent. The way we see the process working is that one parish council would be nominated to take the lead.

Amendment 148AZZJ adds a new factor to the Bill by requiring local authorities to consider, when designating a neighbourhood forum, specifically whether a forum is charging “a zero or minimal” subscription fee. In line with the community-led principles of neighbourhood planning, we do not feel that it is appropriate for central government to dictate the way a forum should run its finances, as Amendment 148AZZJ would do. The requirements in the Bill that neighbourhood forums must meet are deliberately limited in order to maximise the range of new and existing groups of individuals who can put themselves forward to develop neighbourhood plans, while ensuring that they have an open approach to their membership and draw their membership from different sections of the community. With those assurances, I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to move their amendments.

I was asked a number of questions which I will try to respond to. The noble Lord, Lord True, made very clear his difficulties with this aspect of the Bill. As I think I have made clear, no neighbourhood needs to have a forum but if it wants to have one it can. Presumably if it did that, it would work very closely with the local authority. The local authority run by my noble friend Lord True will probably give whatever help is needed.

16:15

On the question of combinations of neighbourhood forums, my noble friend Lord Jenkin asked me about the difference between “residential with business” and “business with residential”. I think they are precisely that: the neighbourhood forums should be all-encompassing in being representative of what is in their neighbourhood. If a neighbourhood is largely residential but has some business component in it, we expect that business component to be represented on the forum and at least have a say in how the neighbourhood plans are formed. Most business areas usually have residential areas attached to them somewhere, but areas that are substantially business areas are still required to look to the residential nature of the area around them and ensure that that residential voice is also involved in the forum. Only if they were fully business areas would they be able to draw up their own plans.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked me whether neighbourhood forums would be able to support their own neighbourhood development plans. They would have to put the plan out to a referendum in the normal way to those who would then take part and decide whether they thought they were suitable.

[Lord Beecham]

What of the case that I put of a business area with discrete residential areas on either side? What is the situation there?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, if they were included in the area, they would be part of that business forum. If it was decided that, percentage-wise, the area was more business than neighbourhood, they would still have to be involved in that. If they were outside that forum, they could make their own forums, but if they were in the business forum area they would have to be included rather than be the totally driving force. Does that answer the question?

[Lord Beecham]

It might when we come to Amendment 148AE later.

[Baroness Hanham]

My noble friend Lord True asked about the extent to which the regulations would lead to a one-size-fits-all approach. We think it is important that local communities put these forums together in a way that suits them, although the forums will have to be put together in conjunction with the local planning authorities. Those planning authorities will be able to see their plans at the neighbourhood level through the development plan documents, but those documents will influence the neighbourhood plans.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about the designation of the neighbourhood forums. I think I responded to this. The local planning authority will be responsible for designating a neighbourhood area and deciding whether it is a business neighbourhood. It will be left to the local authority to decide whether there is a majority of business people or a majority of local people. The Bill does not allow for overlapping neighbourhood areas, which provides certainty as to which area you are in and which policies apply. As I said, if you are in a business area you are in a business area. Neighbourhood areas outside it will need their own forums.

I think I have responded to most of the questions that I have been asked, and I hope that with those responses noble Lords will not press their amendments to a vote.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I would still like to know how we will define the group of persons stated in the Bill as wanting to live in an area?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, lots of areas are places where people would like to live and where they aspire to live. Neighbourhood forums may know some people like that. It is not a brilliant definition, so if I can get a better answer, I will do so.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, perhaps I may pick up on what my noble friend has been saying. I am puzzled as to how business gets involved when a parish is the foundation for neighbourhood planning. A particular example would be this. What happens to the strawberry and cherry growers of Kent? Noble Lords may have a view of strawberry fields and cherry orchards in Kent as they remember them from their youth, but if they went there now they would see polytunnels full of Poles, which tend not to be popular. Well, the Poles are popular locally, but the polytunnels are not. It would be very difficult, under a neighbourhood planning regime, to get permission for a new strawberry field and the polytunnels involved if there was no business influence at all in a neighbourhood planning environment run by a parish council.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I have a few brief points. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in the debate. Other parts of this Bill and other legislation are probably going to lead to an impetus in some areas for the creation of new parish councils. But it is true to say that over three-quarters of the population of England do not live in a parished area, so there is a serious problem of the democratic deficit here.

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her detailed answers to questions I and other Members put to her, but this issue is so complex that I shall have to take her responses away and read them. We will do that, and perhaps we will have the whole summer for it. However, I am not sure that the Government have yet really got a grip on the question of the democratic credibility and legitimacy of neighbourhood forums. The amendments I put down to take away the limit of 21 were not because I want to go back to three, but because I think that 21 is far too small.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend because I know that he has great experience of these matters. However, we are trying to make progress. I know that there are things that he might wish to pursue later, but the Minister has just given an extremely lengthy response which all colleagues will want to read. Perhaps I may suggest that we move on at this point and that these matters can be considered at a later stage. My noble friend may have further questions for the Minister on another occasion. I know that we are in Committee and not on Report, but I know also that the mood of the House is to move on.

[Lord Greaves]

The Chief Whip is absolutely right. We will have discussions later.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Perhaps I may say that the mood of the House on this side is not to delay the Bill but to make sure that we do have proper scrutiny of what is a very long and complex Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will answer for himself, but I think he has been done an injustice.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, proper scrutiny is what we are all about, of course. My noble friend has just given an extremely lengthy answer which shows that this Government are also committed to just that.

[Lord True]

My Lords, we have had a lengthy debate, but this is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of the Bill and it is the first time that we have had an opportunity to put forward proposals and discuss it. I totally respect what my noble friend has said, so I shall seek to be brief in responding to the debate, as I sought to be brief when opening it. However, this is an extremely important matter and, again, it is the first time that we have had an opportunity to grapple with it.

Like other noble Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her lengthy response, which I will study carefully. However, I hope she will forgive me if I say that she skated a little briefly over the fundamental point of whether there should be a permissive regime or not. As I heard it, there were two responses. One was that the proposal that I put forward might take the process a little further away from the community. My fear is that the process in this Bill will take it further away from the community, which is why I put forward in my amendment the proposal that the default position should be that all members of a local community take part. In responding, my noble friend quoted the Government’s guidance to the Bill, which states that everyone will have a chance to get involved during the process but that one group will lead it in each neighbourhood area. I have to ask why. Who thinks up these ideas? Are not local councillors, elected representatives, the people who should lead the process of forming and reconciling local opinion? Why cannot the local authority simply facilitate these matters? I question whether we need these bodies all over the place.

On my noble friend’s other response, I ask her to consider with her officials before Report her statement that local authorities do not need to set up neighbourhood forums. The Bill states that if a local authority does not set up a neighbourhood forum it must give reasons to an organisation or body applying to be designated as a neighbourhood forum. So a process exists whereby a group can ask to be a neighbourhood forum and require an answer from a local authority, which under new Section 61F(12)(d) of the Act, is then subject to regulations from the department about how the local authority must respond to that group. That might be one representative group in an organisation in an area which differs from another one. There must be some response; there are other regulations, so the response must be made in full council. I do not know whether the officials who drafted the Bill know how often full councils meet or the procedures around them. I ask for some further consideration of that central point between now and Report.

It is not necessary to impose the forums in urban areas. As the Local Government Association said—this is not a personal view—there is a risk of bureaucracy. I do not want to labour the point further, but it is one of the most important points that we have come to in the Bill. I ask the Government to reflect on the wide support that my amendment received across the Committee from almost every Peer who spoke, by which I was hugely encouraged. Having heard what was said, I intend to pursue the matter at a later stage, unless we can reach some more productive agreement during the summer. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 148ZZZEA withdrawn.

Debate on whether Clause 101 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, when I put down this clause stand part debate, I might have anticipated that the previous group would cover a great deal of the ground that I want to refer to, so I shall be extremely brief. I shall begin with a bouquet to my noble friend on the Front Bench. It is very helpful that she has sent us in her document her letter to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, of 13 July setting out the purpose and thrust of the many government amendments which have been tabled. However, that is the end of my bouquet, because the fact that, on this part of the Bill alone, my noble friend has tabled well over 30 amendments illustrates what I have been referring to during the passage of the Bill; that is, that the Government are trying to micromanage the whole process. I remember hearing my right honourable friend the Secretary of State proclaim that the localism legislation would be the end of top-down micromanagement. I just wonder how it has all crept into this Bill in the way that it has.

I shall say two things about this. The first is that I have been sent a large number of amendments by the Local Government Association, which is as appalled as I am by the extent of the detailed bureaucratic interference by central government. It has asked me to table a list of amendments—I have 40 of them. I simply said, “I am not going to waste the time of the House by tabling these amendments. I will send the list of the amendments to my noble friend, so that she can see what they are getting at”.

16:30

More positively, I have had a discussion with my noble friend’s honourable friend Greg Clark, the Minister of State in charge of the Bill, and he has agreed—I am very grateful for this—to a meeting with me next week, together with representatives of the local government associations, to see what can be done to try to remove much of this top-down micromanagement, of which we have heard a great deal in the last hour and a quarter. The Local Government Association has sent him a long list of what it thinks could be properly removed from the Bill without affecting its main general thrust of localism and devolving power down to local authorities and local communities.

Happily we have enough time before Report for the Government to ponder these matters. I hope we will see many amendments which do not add to the complications, of which we have heard so much, but remove substantial chunks of the Bill, leaving more to be decided by elected local authorities without the detailed prescription with which we have been furnished. I could give a number of examples from this part of the Bill of an absurd amount of detailed prescription, but I will not do so. This is a clause stand part debate, with which a large number of amendments have been grouped, and I do not wish to weary the Committee further.

Your Lordships know my views on this and I am trying to do something about it between now and Report. I recognise that my noble friend is doing her best to reply to a mass of amendments, but these have been provoked by the fact that there is a great deal of top-down micromanagement even in this part of the Bill. Of course noble Lords will table amendments—as I did myself—if they want to change this or they want to change that. It should not be there—and that is the point that I seek to make.

I apologise for getting a bit hot under the collar about this but I know my views are shared widely across the House. I hope my noble friends will recognise that I do this with the best of motives to try to improve the legislation with which we have been confronted.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows well, his remarks are shared by myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues. We wish him well in his efforts to reduce a great deal of the prescription and the size of the Bill. My Amendment 148ADEA also seeks to remove unnecessary prescription and regulations and to reduce the size of the Bill. I was not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, wanted to remove the whole of Clause 101 to Room 101 but, in practice, it is the unnecessary prescriptive parts that we would all like to see go to Room 101.

I have one general question under the clause stand part debate about the funding of local planning authorities. It is clear that, as set out in the Bill, neighbourhood planning will result in extra burdens, extra costs and a need for extra resources for local planning authorities. The Government have given a guarantee to local authorities recently that any extra burdens will be funded. What guarantees are there that the extra costs on planning authorities due to neighbourhood planning will be funded, and in what way will this be done?

The amendments in relation to neighbourhood areas are probing amendments and are not to be taken literally; they are merely to probe the issues. They probe why it is desirable to designate the whole of a parish council area as a neighbourhood area and in what circumstances it may be appropriate not to do so. I think that the Minister has substantially answered that already. I particularly welcome her statement that two or more small parishes could join together, where sensible, to form one neighbourhood area, otherwise the process would become rather ridiculous. That is most welcome. They also probe why it is desirable to maintain the existing boundaries of a neighbourhood area if they are no longer appropriate and in what circumstances it may be appropriate not to do so. Perhaps more substantially, they suggest that,

“where an existing designation includes the whole or part of the area of a parish council any such modification may only be made with the consent of that council.”

In her very welcome statement that parishes could combine in a neighbourhood area where that is sensible, the Minister said that that would take place only with the consent of the parishes concerned. Surely, if the boundaries of neighbourhood areas that include the parish or part of the parish are to be changed, it is only sensible to do it with the consent of the appropriate parish council or councils. It would be helpful if we could have that assurance.

The amendments also suggest an additional consideration when a local planning authority is considering whether to designate an area as a neighbourhood area, which really gets to the core of the matter of whether the area is suitable for the purposes of neighbourhood planning. I was surprised that this consideration was not in the Bill. It seems to me to be the first and most important thing that should be considered. Again, I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I shall speak specifically to Amendment 148ADBA because it is another aspect of the problem that we have identified about parish councils and the area in which they can sit in relation to a neighbourhood plan. This amendment would remove the restriction on a parish council being part of a neighbourhood area where the rest of that neighbourhood area is unparished.

Parish councils in urban areas have existed since local government reorganisation in the early 1970s, and they can lie within wards of a local authority but may not cover the whole of that ward. As it stands, the Bill prevents such a parished area working with the unparished area when it wants to, to produce a single neighbourhood plan. This amendment simply solves that problem. However, there is a better solution, which is to turn the unparished areas with neighbourhood forums into parish councils. That would give a democratic legitimacy to neighbourhood planning which is then based on the ballot box.

The solution to this problem lies in the public services White Paper published last week. Within that, there are a set of proposals in relation to the creation of neighbourhood councils in urban areas. I noted what my noble friend the Minister said about unparished neighbourhood forums being a pragmatic solution. The difficulty is that I do not think that pragmatism goes far enough. There has to be a democratic legitimacy to neighbourhood planning, which is based on “one person, one vote” and the right to express that view.

A referendum will not be sufficient to do that because the people helping to make decisions should have a democratic base. The solution to that problem lies within the public services White Paper. It would be enormously helpful if in the next few months the aims of the Government in relation to that White Paper and neighbourhood councils could be brought together with this Bill to produce an outcome which enables unparished urban areas to have a parish council structure.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. They are all deigned to build greater flexibility into the Bill and make it operate more in line with the real meaning of localism as I see it and with the opinions of local people, particularly in urban areas. New Section 61G(1)(a), to be inserted in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 by Schedule 9, allows an authority to designate a neighbourhood area only where a would-be neighbourhood forum or parish council has asked for it. That is cumbersome and restrictive.

My Amendment 148ADA would allow a local authority simply to ask local people what they consider their neighbourhood areas to be and to designate them themselves. To quote the Bill, why do they need to wait for a,

“body which is … capable of being, designated as a neighbourhood forum”,

to ask for it? Surely a local authority can do that.

[Lord Beecham]

Can the noble Lord help the House with a little explanation of the effect of Amendment 148ADA? It indicates that you could have a parish council where,

“the authority has conducted a survey of the residents of its local authority area asking its residents to define their own … village … and at least 5% of the households in the local authority area”.

Does that cover a local authority—be it Richmond, Newcastle or anywhere else—if 5 per cent of the population indicate what their area is in a ballot? You could have a neighbourhood forum where perhaps nobody has responded. Or does the amendment mean that there would have to be at least a 5 per cent response within each area that was to be designated as a neighbourhood area? That is rather different from the wording that is before us.

[Lord True]

That may be the case and I apologise if the drafting is not clear. What I had in mind is a 5 per cent response across the local authority area. It seems to me that if only a very small number respond to say that they want this place to be designated as an area or village, ipso facto that demonstrates that they do not see it as an area. However, if a significant number do, then they would. Some of these may be small. My Amendment 148ADD would require an authority to take account of local people’s preferences in the survey. Perhaps I could answer the noble Lord by saying he is right—it is not a problem in rural areas but it is an urban problem. My authority, along with others, has conducted surveys. In the survey we had locally, the response level was above 5 per cent and the respondents designated 14 different areas that they defined as the area in which they live, or as their local area. The population size varied from a few hundred up to several thousand. My contention is that, prima facie, that is a community that feels it is a community and can be designated, if we go through this model in the Bill, as a neighbourhood area. Have I made myself clear?

[Lord Beecham]

No, because you could have 5 per cent of Newcastle or Richmond concentrated in part of the authority. That would then appear to validate the creation of neighbourhood forums in parts that have expressed no interest whatever.

[Lord True]

Sorry, I did not make myself clear. The 5 per cent would have to have been in the area to be designated.

[Lord Beecham]

It does not say that.

[Lord True]

I apologise. I am not good at drafting but I do want to press on and let the House make progress.

When people were asked to respond as to what their neighbourhood area was, those areas often overlapped, not just horizontally but vertically. People in an urban area can very easily feel attached to two geographical concepts and at different levels—a community and a town. My Amendment 148ADE challenges what I think is, again, a rigid concept in the Bill that no neighbourhood area may overlap another one. It allows people to be members of and participate in more than one neighbourhood area, if they have said in a survey that they feel part of or influenced by events and developments in more than one area. In the previous group, my noble friend was moving towards that by saying that people outside the area could participate in a referendum. However, people’s perceptions about planning may differ also within an area—two communities may have different views, say, about local parking standards but be united on back-garden development across the whole of the town, or on shops. The last thing I would contest is the guidance to the Bill, which says that there should be a strong assumption that existing ward boundaries will define the neighbourhood area. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also addressed this point.

Anyone who has been involved in representations to the Local Government Boundary Commission will tell you that lines drawn by the commission are frequently strongly contested and often bear absolutely no relation to community realities. Take my own small town, which is covered by parts of three different wards. The neighbouring ward contains two communities that, in the survey I mentioned, self-defined as two separate communities—Mortlake and Barnes. They saw themselves as entirely different. Barnes is actually split between two wards, while Twickenham is covered by four wards. I do not see how you can address neighbourhood planning simply in an urban area without allowing flexibility to stray across these neighbourhood areas, both horizontally and vertically, as I have put it. The concepts in the Bill are therefore potentially too rigid and problems arise only because of that. I shall not press these amendments, but I ask my noble friend to reflect on this point: we should allow communities, where we can, to define their own place, coalesce and differ for different purposes as they wish, and not to be locked into one neighbourhood area for five years. They should be facilitated in doing that by a local authority, which has the flexibility to move the pieces around and bring people together for different purposes. That would be real, active localism and not the rather rigid approach set out in the Bill at this point.

16:45

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I will be brief. First, can I say how much we appreciate the effort that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is making to try to get some of the bureaucracy out of this Bill? We would be very interested in staying in touch with his considerations, with the LGA and the Minister, to see what progress is being made. That would certainly help the passage of the Bill when we come to Report and subsequent stages.

On the separate amendments, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True, that we should not be in a situation whereby you can designate a neighbourhood forum only if you are asked to do so. There ought to be flexibility for an authority itself to do that, as long as there is sufficient community support. I will not go into the arithmetic of how the 5 per cent works. We support the thrust of that. The idea of two or more parish councils joining together has been supported.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in seeking to deal with overlap with parish councils, made a very valid point. He is right in the sense that the best solution would be for it all to be a parish council, or more than one parish council. But even if that is not the case, I do not see why that overlap could not be part of the flexibility that is around these provisions.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, wanted a suitability test. I am not quite sure why that is not encompassed within the desirability test, but perhaps we should not at this hour get into the semantics of that. I see what he is seeking to achieve, and I certainly support the noble Lord in seeking to delete a lot of the regulation-making powers in the provisions.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their brevity in introducing these amendments. I do not think that I want to comment widely on what my noble friend Lord Jenkin said in addressing the stand part. It was not entirely to do with this part of the Bill but was a much more wide-ranging discussion on the nature of the Bill and his concerns about it. I am glad to know that he will be able to express them to the Minister who is handling the Bill, Greg Clark, and I am sure that the discussions will be well received, because Greg Clark has been very notable in consensus in the other place. Whether he will be able to be consensual with what is being said, I do not know. Noble Lords say that the Bill is trying to micromanage all the processes, but we do not think that that is what we are trying to do. It intends to provide guidance in regulations and to use a light-touch way to bring in what is in many cases, in many parts of the Bill, a new way to manage local areas and authorities.

I want to address one or two areas that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord True, has a very great deal of concerns about this Bill. There is not a lot that I can say to reassure him to make it any better. But as regards why the local authority should make decisions, I think that the noble Lord himself, as leader of a council, would be very upset if the council did not have a role in ensuring that neighbourhood forums were where they were wanted by the neighbourhood. He would be upset if they were not properly constructed in a way that the council thought was sensible, as well as the people who lived in that area. On why communities will be taking the initiative in planning their areas and on who will initiate the process of deciding a neighbourhood area, the local council will have an important role in the work of ensuring that they are coherent. On overlapping areas and ward boundaries, the latter are reasonably sensible in towns, being well understood and well designated. They largely cover similar areas and similar problems. However, I do not believe that there is any difficulty in cities. If I am wrong about this, I will be corrected and will come back on it but I see no reason why there should not be two forums within a ward, if that is the way the ward splits up.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I apologise but whatever may be true in towns, perhaps I might give a direct illustration. My wife’s ward on Braintree District Council is called Coggeshall and North Feering. The neighbouring ward is Feering and Kelvedon, and I need hardly say that North Feering almost certainly sees itself as more closely related for most purposes with Feering and Kelvedon than with Coggeshall, which is roughly two and a half to three miles away. The reason for this is that the ward boundaries have been drawn to produce reasonable equality in order to justify the numbers of councillors. They have nothing to do with the sort of things that we are talking about. Again, we are seeking flexibility, not a straitjacket.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I confirm that I was right that wards can divide themselves or be divided into more than one neighbourhood forum, which may pick up on some of the points that my noble friend Lord Newton has made. There is a certain coherence within ward boundaries, but that coherence may be of people having more than one sense of community to come together in a forum within those boundaries.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised the point about the coming together of the public services White Paper and this legislation. I have not read that White Paper in huge depth but I am sure that somebody has. My sensible answer is to say that we will look at that to see whether there are overlaps or differences. Parish councils are going to be the main type of council in the country that has a mandate to undertake a neighbourhood plan because I gather that, by definition, most areas anywhere in the countryside are parished.

Amendment 148ADCAA is intended to allow a neighbourhood area to cover more than one parish area, where two or more parish councils make a joint application. As I think I said in reply to the previous debate, we are pretty content with that. Our position on many existing town or parish council boundaries is that they will form logical boundaries for neighbourhood planning. I appreciate that there is a great difference in the numbers that are in parish councils, but they will be able to divide themselves into one or two if they wish.

I am not going to comment on all the amendments, as I am told that we have to keep to a very tight timetable. I hope that most of my remarks cover most of the sense of the debate. Perhaps I should quickly respond to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. He asked whether a neighbourhood plan could be produced covering a parished and a non-parished area. The answer to that is no. The Bill already allows for parishes to work with non-parished areas in preparing comprehensive neighbourhood plans covering both parished and non-parished areas. Neighbourhood forums should be able to become parish councils and we hope that many neighbourhood forums will take the opportunity of producing a neighbourhood plan to consider becoming a new parish council. The Government are required to provide resources to local authorities in respect of any new statutory duty under the new burdens scheme, so the answer to the question of whether there will be financial support is yes.

I hope that with that noble Lords will be happy to withdraw their amendments.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very disappointed that my noble friend is not paying more mind to the amendments of my noble friend Lord True. Life is complicated out there. I know that Kensington and Chelsea are pretty uniform places, but even if she were to stray south of the river into Battersea, where I spend some of my time, she would find that it was very difficult to draw boundaries that will have any sense of agreement. There will be a tendency for fragments of local communities to try to grab territory for themselves in an unco-ordinated way. That will apply particularly in the deeper inner cities where community tends to be defined by origin rather than by geography. Under those circumstances, it would be very helpful to have a local authority—which after all is used to dealing with the coherence of the area and how it works—setting out at least some framework by which people can operate. They can always propose something different if they feel that they need to, but to have that coherence offered by a local authority would be immensely helpful.

As regards overlapping areas, how do you deal with somewhere like Winchester, say, which is obviously too big to deal with as a neighbourhood but needs coherence over that area when it comes to neighbourhood planning? Going back to a point that I think the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made on the previous occasion, how do you deal with areas where there is a city or a large town which is confined within boundaries that are too tight and needs to work with its surrounding areas to expand? Under both those circumstances we are going to need to think of local flexible solutions that work with the grain of the neighbourhood and produce the right solutions for those circumstances. We are going to need flexibility. I am very disappointed that my noble friend the Minister does not think that that is required.

Clause 101 agreed.

Schedule 9 : Neighbourhood planning

Amendment 148ZZEA

Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

148ZZEA: Schedule 9, page 304, line 20, at beginning insert “Subject to subsection (14),”

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, this is a small group. In moving Amendment 148ZZEA, I wish to speak also to Amendments 148ZL and 150ZZA, with which it is grouped. All three refer to national parks. Amendment 148ZL states:

“A neighbourhood development order may not be made in a national park”.

Amendment 150ZZA states that a neighbourhood development plan can be done only,

“with the consent of the National Park Authority”.

That is in a national park, obviously. These amendments seek to ask the Government whether they have thought about the role of neighbourhood planning in national parks. Is the same model appropriate? If it is appropriate, should there be extra safeguards to prevent decisions of local residents, and/or businesses, overriding the national interest? Planning in national parks is different. National parks are different. The reason they are national parks is because they comprise very special areas. Because of this, planning is done differently and is the responsibility of national park authorities, which are a partnership between local interests—representatives of local authorities and parish councils in the area—and national interests comprising independent members appointed by the Secretary of State. National park governance is being looked at by the Government and there may be some changes. However, I do not think that that basic principle will change.

The system of neighbourhood planning set out in the Bill does not seem to cater adequately for the national interest in national parks. Neighbourhood development orders and neighbourhood development plans will have to conform to the local plan—the national park plan. I assume that that is the case, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that. However, further safeguards are still needed. For instance, a referendum of local residents on a neighbourhood development order does not allow for the national interest to be involved in the referendum decision—and clearly it cannot.

We see a conflict over planning applications in national parks. Very often the recommendations of district and parish councils are not invariably followed by the national park authority. There are good reasons for that—there has to be a balance between local and national interests because they are national parks. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, but this is an issue that the Government have perhaps not yet properly thought through. I beg to move.

17:00

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I think that the short answer to my noble friend’s question is that I understand that the powers in relation to national parks are extremely different from what we have been talking about. Neighbourhood development orders would be allowed in national park areas, but they would still have to be in general conformity with the strategic policies of the local plan. I also understand and appreciate that national parks may cover more than one local authority, and it would therefore depend on which area they were in with regard to the local plan. NDOs would have to be appropriate and have regard to national policy. The national policy framework would govern that, but there is an area within that that we can discuss. The situation is covered, and the fact that NDOs would have to conform with the local plans and the national policy frameworks would be enough to suggest that development orders could be formed in that area.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am not sure that that is a satisfactory answer. I thank my noble friend for it but there needs to be further discussion about this matter and exactly how these new types of local plan will impact on the very special areas that are national parks. There is time for further discussion and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 148ZZEA withdrawn.

Amendment 148ZZF

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

148ZZF: Schedule 9, page 304, line 24, after “permission” insert “to implement the policies or proposals of an applicable neighbourhood development plan or development plan document (within the meaning of Part 2 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004)”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 150E, 152ZD, 152AA and 152BA. As we have discussed, involving communities in planning for neighbourhoods is significant. It provides the opportunity for local communities to engage in shaping their local environments now and in the future. However, I reiterate the concern that others have raised about the complex provisions that have to be grappled with at a time of growing scarcity of resources to local authorities and neighbourhoods. We should also be worried about the potential lack of accountability in the preparation of neighbourhood plans.

Noble Lords may be aware that the Royal Town Planning Institute has set out other options that would not require this additional cumbersome legislation. However, we are where we are. There remains, however, a real risk that the overly complex nature of the proposed system may mean that neighbourhood planning will not be as visionary, widespread or effective as intended. However, we acknowledge that improvements have been made on Report in another place.

Our Amendment 148ZZF defines a neighbourhood development order as an order that implements an NDP or a DPD policy. This is part of the proposition to reduce the complexity of the neighbourhood planning system whereby NDOs are considered within a wider neighbourhood context.

It is suggested that this is necessary with regard to neighbourhood planning to ensure that developments consented to through NDOs and community right to build orders are based on a comprehensive understanding of issues. The RTPI understands that that may be the intention behind the provisions in the Bill, but does not believe that it is clear from the relevant clauses as drafted. The amendment is supplemented by Amendments 152ZD and 152AA, the latter requiring proposals for NDOs to be accompanied by the NDP or DPD policies they are intended to implement.

Amendment 150E again addresses an issue raised by the RTPI, which recommends that neighbourhood plans and the associated referendum should be used to express the community's priorities for investment in the area—for example, the community's priorities for any CIL or the new homes bonus. That would help to ensure that neighbourhood planning is clearly linked with sources of investment in neighbourhoods, such as proposals for the new homes bonus and community budgeting and thinking about community assets, and would make neighbourhood plans more positive and meaningful.

I will comment on the plethora of other amendments in the group in due course, but, in the mean time, I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I have more than a few amendments in this group. Again, I shall not refer specifically to them because that would take too long; I will just try to cover the issues in most cases.

One of the most important amendments is about neighbourhood development orders. It seems to us that neighbourhood plans can fit into the existing planning system reasonably well, especially if they have to comply with the broad aspects of the local and national planning guidance. Neighbourhood development orders seem to be more difficult, and could have a fairly disruptive effect on proper planning if we are not careful.

The lead amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has covered the crucial question of the relationship between neighbourhood and development orders and the existing development plan and its components. I think he referred to the national policy planning framework and other national guidance. If neighbourhood development orders have to comply in a general or strategic way with existing plans, is it the same as if they were ordinary planning applications or is it in some way different? Is the degree to which they have to comply less or the same? My second question is whether neighbourhood development orders and plans can be made and adopted if the local plan has not yet been adopted. I recently received a Written Answer suggesting that just over 100 local planning authorities have now adopted a core strategy. That leaves several hundred who have not, and it is not clear how long it will take them—although quite a few more are in the pipeline and have been submitted for examination. That is an important issue, because there will be a hiatus in many places.

New Section 61E(2) in the Town and Country Planning Act to be inserted by the Bill states:

“A ‘neighbourhood development order’ is an order which grants planning permission …

(a) for development specified in the order, or

(b) for development of any class specified in the order”.

One of my amendments, Amendment 148ZZJ, probes what that means. What is the relationship of that word to the usually understood types of planning permission? People talk about full planning permission and outline planning permission. If it is an outline application, it requires a further application for the details. Even if it is a full application, there may well still be reserved matters that require a further application or, perhaps more likely, the written consent of the local planning authority. How will this work with neighbourhood development orders, which are effectively for outline permission? Does it mean that outline permission can be given for, say, housing, perhaps with details of access and nothing more? In that case, how will the detailed application be determined? Will it need another neighbourhood development order and, if not, will the parish council or even the neighbourhood forum deal with it and give consent for the details, or will it then have to be passed to the local planning authority? I cannot work out from the Bill the answers to these questions. Indeed, can the developers just get on with it, with no further permissions required? If so, that would drive a coach and horses through proper planning.

So far as concerns the area covered by a neighbourhood development order, new Section 61E(2) states:

“A ‘neighbourhood development order’ is an order which grants planning permission in relation to a particular neighbourhood area”.

Can that mean just part of a neighbourhood area? Once the neighbourhood area has been defined as a parish or an urban area with a neighbourhood forum, can a neighbourhood development order relate to part of that area rather than the whole area? Again, the position is not clear to me.

New Section 61I(5) states:

“A neighbourhood development order may not relate to more than one neighbourhood area”,

but the boundaries of neighbourhood areas may not relate to a reasonable proposal on the ground. This concerns the flexibility issue that has been talked about. Why cannot two parish councils or two neighbourhood forums co-operate to make one neighbourhood development order for an area which straddles a boundary —for example, an area of disused land, perhaps with former industrial use, old railways sidings and so on—between two clearly defined neighbourhoods where the development site forms a natural marginal border area? Would that not be possible under this system and would there therefore be a need to go for a normal planning application?

New Section 61I(4) states:

“A neighbourhood development order may not grant planning permission for any development in any particular case where planning permission is already granted for that development in that case”.

I do not understand what that means. How exact and specific do the two cases have to be? Is it referring to exactly the same area, exactly the same kind of development or exactly the same planning permission in detail, or do the cases have to be similar, and how similar? The Bill seems to be fairly vague. What happens if there is an existing planning permission and a neighbourhood development order grants permission for a different kind of development—for example, a housing scheme in a place where there is already permission for a retail development? Do the two then stand side by side, with one planning permission and one neighbourhood development order that could be taken up, or does the neighbourhood development order eliminate the existing planning permission?

What is the role of local planning authorities in examinations of neighbourhood development plans and neighbourhood development orders? The Bill says that they have a right to appear if there is a hearing but what if there is no hearing? Does the local planning authority have an automatic right to comment on the plan, engage with the inspector or examiner, and make representations and recommendations?

Setting standards for neighbourhood development orders is an area where clear rules are plainly needed. Our amendment says that the Secretary of State “must”, not “may”, make regulations here. This is one area where regulations are clearly needed, otherwise the standards will not exist. If the proposed standards for the preparation of the neighbourhood development order and other documents cover what is in any documents, as well as, under the Bill, the,

“collection, sources, verification, processing and presentation of information”,

it is crucial that this process takes place in a professional, efficient way, and it also costs money.

New Section 61I(6) states:

“A neighbourhood development order may make different provision for different cases or circumstances”.

I do not understand how that will work. Does it mean that a neighbourhood development order can cover a range of different planning permissions for the same site? It seems to mean that. Normally, you get planning permission for a particular project on a particular site in an area, so how will that work?

Finally, there is an intriguing provision in new Section 61K(4) which says that the Secretary of State may issue regulations to make provision for,

“treating parish councils as local planning authorities (instead of, or in addition to, the authorities) for the purposes of the determination of applications for approvals”.

Is this really a practical proposition? What assessment has been made of the availability of professional planning staff to support parish councils as planning authorities? Would it be a general provision or would just a few large town councils apply? What criteria would be applied? Would it make the system more efficient? I can imagine that a town council might demand that every application goes to the council rather than through the system of delegation which is typically used about 90 per cent of the time now in local planning authorities.

I also have a series of amendments calling for less detailed prescription in all sorts of ways, but that matter has been debated and argued very extensively so I shall not pursue it further.

17:15

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 151 is quite simple. I am interested in the Government’s views on how strong a neighbourhood plan will be. If someone has been left out of a neighbourhood plan and still wants to develop their property, will they have the same scope to go for a departure as they do at the moment, or will there be a strong presumption that the neighbourhood plan prevails?

Amendment 152ZB deals with the way in which neighbourhood plans intersect with development orders. A lot of planning permission goes through under development orders which, quite rightly, a district, a county or a borough will not have a particular interest in, but which a neighbourhood will have an interest in. Neighbourhoods are very interested in the way in which their local shopping streets develop, for example. Many things that can happen to a shopping street can happen under the general permissions given under a development order. I am interested in the way in which those two intersect.

Amendment 152 is a little more complicated than that. Rural and semi-rural parishes, where there is a lot of scope for development, will become wealthy—that is the wrong word; they will have a lot of money at their disposal as a result of this Bill. A typical parish will go round its residents and ask what they want and will also go round all the neighbouring landlords and say, “If we give you the sort of permissions you are looking for, what will you do for the community?”. That is the only way it can work, because if that did not happen, any landlord who had a deal to offer could upset the referendum by saying to people voting in it, “Why are you voting for this and giving Farmer Jones £1 million as a result of the development? If you had asked me, I would have said that you could have had £0.5 million towards the village hall, a new village shop or to subsidise the bus service and that I would require only £0.5 million if you put those houses on my land”.

Inevitably, there has to be that kind of negotiation with all the local landlords. The neighbourhood plan, when it emerges, will be a document which results in a very substantial flow of funds from landlords to the community. In what way they will provide those funds, whether by permissions or by being prepared to build things for the community or subsidise things for the community, will be a total re-establishment of relationships between landlords and the community and a much more equal appreciation of sharing benefits and burdens of development. I reckon that you would probably get the planning game settling down at about 50:50 between the landlord and the community.

Incidentally, this will render entirely unnecessary the argument that we had a few days ago about the community right to bid. Most of my noble friends were worrying about relatively rural communities. They will be in a position to buy. They will have funds potentially sitting around to buy the cricket pitch. They will not be hanging around waiting to see whether they can raise money. They will be well off and have a great deal of flexibility where such things are concerned and anyone wanting to sell local property will start to think of the local community as being a place to find a purchaser. Under those circumstances, inevitably one gets into a position where there is scope for corruption. We have to be careful that that does not occur. In a small community, people by and large know each other's business: but everything ought to be open. It is essential that when one deals with these sums of money—hundreds of thousands of pounds—everything ought to be open for inspection, so that everybody can see what deals have been proposed by landlords, what the basis is for choosing particular deals that have gone into a neighbourhood plan and what deals have been cast aside. Nothing should be hidden, everything should be open. That way, at a neighbourhood level, we will have pretty good insurance against corruption.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to what the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Lucas, said on this grouping. My conclusion is that the developer who offers the most money to the community will get his planning permission. It sounds like a Dutch auction, with very little to do with the sustainability arguments that the Committee talked about in the past two days. Perhaps I have got it wrong; I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister says in response.

[Lord Lucas]

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is being entirely too untrusting of communities and of the structures in the Bill. First, the wider issues of sustainability clearly come in to the examination of the plan. A site on a flood plain, for example, which has been proposed merely because the landlord is prepared to offer 70 per cent of value rather than 50 per cent, will clearly not get through the process. Secondly, communities will make a judgment. Sustainability is a concept that has a meaning for a community that is not there in its wider application; it is how the community evolves and flourishes. There will be many aspects of that which will apply to individual sites and bear as heavily as the amount of money that may come out of the site.

Communities will take a sophisticated judgment on which plans they wish to have. They will be well aware of the advantages and disadvantages to them of putting a development in a particular location. Landlords will likewise be able to see, for example, that this is the obvious place to put houses and so they do not need to give the community as much. If the neighbouring farmer wants to have a development on his land and it is slightly more of an eyesore, he will be asking the community to accept a greater burden in having the development there, so the community will need a greater benefit. That is the fundamental of neighbourhood planning. Under the current system, the farmer gets all the benefits and the neighbourhood gets the burdens. Under this system, the benefits are shared. How great the burden is should be reflected in how great the benefit is.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I will start with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Certainly, neighbourhood development orders will be effective within the terms of local development plans. These plans will designate areas for development. Although a neighbourhood development order will be able to point to where the community feels it would be appropriate to have development, it can do that only if it coincides with the local development plan. Therefore, it can grant planning permission only where it is doing that in accordance with what has already been agreed. There are also safeguards in place to ensure that proposals contribute to the delivery of sustainable development. We do not expect communities to plan for an unsustainable future. As my noble friend said, with mega-developments the money will not go directly to the community but will go through CIL, as we have discussed. That will be the charge on the development. The community then will get a proportion of that to help with whatever it is deemed to require.

Neighbourhood development orders have to be in general conformity with the strategic policies of the development plan and with national planning policies. We discussed that earlier. We want to make it clear in the Bill that neighbourhood development orders are very flexible. They can permit different types and classes of development. For example—I was asked a question on this—a community could decide that it wants to use neighbourhood development orders to give full or outline planning permission for a specific development scheme, for several types of development schemes across a wider area or to extend permitted development rights more generally across the neighbourhood area. However, that has to be done within the plans that it has already put forward and agreed with the council and the community through the referendum. Legally, a neighbourhood development order can grant planning permission under the terms. A development order can only grant planning permission for development specified in the order and could still permit a whole class of development, for example a change of use.

The Bill’s provisions seek to ensure that a neighbourhood development order cannot grant planning permission for a development that already has planning permission. I think that that makes sense. If a planning authority has already given permission for a development on a site, for example, that planning is already in place and it cannot consequently be changed unless the applicant makes changes to the plans, which then would need to be dealt with in the neighbourhood order.

I have already said that the community will decide whether it wants to use neighbourhood development orders to give full or outline planning permission.

The test of general conformity with strategic policies in the local development plan currently in place in the area covers what I said. I was asked whether the local development plan has to be conformed with, and we have said yes several times.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made a short contribution about developers buying off the community. There are crucial safeguards in place to ensure that proposals contribute and are kept within the confines of regulations.

I think that that more or less addresses the questions that I was asked. I will also have to move two government amendments: Amendments 148ZA and 148ZB. I wrote to noble Lords with an explanation of what the amendments do. Therefore, with the leave of the Committee, I do not propose to go into much further detail. However, I am happy to write to noble Lords on any detailed questions that they may have subsequently. I therefore beg leave to move my amendments, which I do formally.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)]

Would the noble Baroness allow us to dispose of the existing amendment first? She can move her amendments when this one has been withdrawn.

[Baroness Hanham]

I ask noble Lords to withdraw the amendments that they have put forward on the basis of my responses.

[Lord Greaves]

I asked two questions. If a neighbourhood development order gives outline planning permission, which body is then responsible for dealing with the detailed planning permission which presumably has to follow? That was the first question, and the most important one.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I would like to add another question. I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, as he moved a number of amendments. There is probably not time for the Minister to answer them now, but perhaps she will be able to write to us with a detailed answer to the questions relating to how a small parish council will have the resources to grant planning permission, if it is going to.

17:30

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I understand that we are under pressure of time and I am totally in support of getting this Bill through. However, that should not reduce us to the sort of Commons Committee stage format we seem to be reaching of no answers being given to amendments that have been moved and spoken to. I do not feel that I have been answered in any respect in any of the amendments that I raised. The Minister has available to her the option of agreeing to write in detail to noble Lords to cover points she has not answered. She also has the option of suggesting meetings between now and Report. I very much hope that she will avail herself of those, because otherwise I shall feel the need to speak at much greater length to make sure that my points are properly recorded.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I thank the noble Baroness for her response. The more we got into the amendments moved by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Lucas, and some of the responses that came forward, the more complex this issue became. I am still not clear what the boundaries of the neighbourhood development order will be in all respects and why it could not be used simply as a tool to deliver the development plan policies or the neighbourhood plan policies as a more efficient and effective route of engendering neighbourhood planning. However, I will read the record and consider whether we need to return to this on Report.

The exchange between my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, around financial consideration is extremely important, because we are going to come on to what I think will be quite a substantial debate on Clause 124—I was going to say shortly, but hopefully at some stage before we rise tomorrow. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made an important point about making sure that transparency is absolutely key for there to be confidence in whatever system we have.

The idea of financial inducements flowing from all of this—as I understand it, and I am not a planning lawyer—takes us down a rather sticky and difficult path. We have issues around CIL and Section 106, the application of which has been narrowed. If this is seen as an opportunity for there to be inducements beyond those related to the development, that is quite a significant departure from where we have been in planning policy since 1947. Perhaps we will have the chance to expand on this in a later debate. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 148ZZF withdrawn.

Amendments 148ZZG to 148ZZJ not moved.

Amendment 148ZA

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

148ZA: Schedule 9, page 304, line 37, leave out from “if” to “have” in line 1 on page 305 and insert “in each applicable referendum under that Schedule more than half of those voting”

Amendment 148ZA agreed.

Amendment 148ZB

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

148ZB: Schedule 9, page 305, leave out lines 5 and 6 and insert—
“(5) If—
(a) there are two applicable referendums under that Schedule (because the order relates to a neighbourhood area designated as a business area under section 61GA), and(b) in one of those referendums (but not the other) more than half of those voting have voted in favour of the order,the authority may (but need not) make a neighbourhood development order to which the proposal relates.”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask the noble Baroness a question on this. I am sorry, I think it applies to Amendment 148ZA as well—I think I am in the right amendment here, with all these Zs. I am grateful for the explanatory letter that came with these government amendments, which touch upon issues of non-domestic ratepayers and their involvement with a referendum. Can the noble Baroness confirm that with non-domestic ratepayers we are not just dealing with businesses, we are dealing with a whole range of other organisations which would be non-domestic ratepayers, for example, charities?

Could we have clarity in respect of how many votes somebody gets? Is it one vote per hereditament, even though there might be several hereditaments occupied by the same entity, or is it one per entity, however many hereditaments are actually occupied? The amendment presupposes that there will be more than one referendum in relation to a proposition, although the noble Baroness’s letter referred to there being one referendum at the same time, although the votes will be counted separately. The proposition seemed to be that it was one referendum, not more than one referendum, but perhaps the noble Baroness might clarify that for us.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, if the referendums are on different subjects, I think that is where the duplication came from. Of course, they would be counted separately, they would be carried out on the same day, and they might even have different rules attached to them, depending on what they were about. I hope that answers the noble Lord’s question. With regard to votes, there would be one vote per listed non-domestic ratepayer and, as I understand it, there would be one vote for anybody on the electoral register. “Non-domestic ratepayer” is one business and if there was a resident it would be on the electoral register.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

If, for example, a supermarket had two different establishments in a particular area, they might be separately rated, separate hereditaments—is that one vote or two?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I do not know if the scheme we are running can do that. I will check and I will write to the noble Lord, but my gut feeling would be that if they were in the same neighbourhood area it would probably be two if they were separately rated because it is one per listed non-domestic ratepayer. If that is not correct, I will write to the noble Lord.

I will just say to my noble friend Lord Lucas that I thought I had addressed his concern about financial inducements by saying that there could only be an exchange of money around planning on the basis of agreed local development plans and any negotiations that have been done on those to reduce CIL or Section 106. Having said that, I also agree that anything that is done needs to be transparent, and we will make sure that that is the case.

[Lord Greaves]

On this question of voting, if there is a small business, a corner shop, for example, where the shopkeeper also lives, does that shopkeeper then have two votes?

[Baroness Valentine]

I support the government amendments but would like to make one suggestion about simplification. There should be two votes in all cases, a business and a residential vote, except where either businesses or residents are a negligible presence in the neighbourhood area. The benefit of that would be that the local authority can test the mood of both residents and business. Where they agree, the vote would be binding, but where they disagree the solution is likely to be a mediated solution rather than a yes/no vote. That is likely to represent a more sustainable solution where the residents and businesses vote differently. My plea would be for there to be a business and residential vote in most situations, with the local authority taking the casting vote. From a civic society point of view, the businesses would never override the residential vote and the default would be for the local authority to take the view.

[Lord Beecham]

I am sorry to add to the Minister’s burdens, but I would like a little clarification. In her recent intervention, the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, has continued to use the term “business vote”, but as the Minister has rightly pointed out it is a non-domestic vote, which presumably includes the local authority’s own buildings, and indeed government offices, so she might be casting votes up and down the country. However, I have a difficulty—it might just be me, I must confess—with Amendment 148ZB. The latter provision in Amendment 148AE requires an authority in effect to consider whether a business area should be designated as a neighbourhood area, but Amendment 148ZB talks about a situation in which there are,

“two applicable referendums under that Schedule (because the order relates to a neighbourhood area designated as a business area under section 61GA)”.

Am I correct in thinking that there are two applicable referendums because they relate both to a business area and to a residential neighbourhood area? I do not quite understand the reference to “two applicable referendums”. If there are to be two applicable referendums, I come back to the question that I posed earlier about a business area that might adjoin two separate residential neighbourhood areas. I do not understand how this will work for referendums and how proposed new subsection (5)(b) in Amendment 148ZB will operate, because there might conceivably be three referendums: one for the business area and one for each of the two adjoining residential areas. If I am correct that that might occur, the outcome will be somewhat complicated.

Frankly, I do not expect the Minister to be able to give an answer off the cuff, although she may do, in which case I will nominate her for a Nobel prize for understanding daft legislation. I would be very grateful if she could indicate that she will write to me and perhaps place a copy of the letter in the Library afterwards.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I have two responses to give. The first response is to my noble friend Lord Greaves, who asked about residential accommodation above business premises. Both would have votes, so there would be two votes. The second response is to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. If he will forgive me, I will write in response to his points about the referendums.

Amendment 148ZB agreed.

Amendments 148ZC, 148ZCA and 148ZD not moved.

Amendment 148ZE

Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

148ZE: Schedule 9, page 305, line 15, after “with,” insert “the Equality Act 2010,”

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 148ZE, I will also speak to Amendments 148ABA, 150C and 152C in the same group. These amendments are basically about equality.

New Section 61E(8), which was inserted into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, says that the local planning authority can refuse to make a neighbourhood development order in the event of non-compliance with “any EU obligation” or with the Human Rights Act 1998. Amendment 148ZE would add compliance with the Equality Act 2010 to these obligations. Amendment 150C makes the same stipulation about a local development plan. Amendment 148ABA states that a neighbourhood forum exercises,

“a function of a public nature when exercising functions under”,

the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. Amendment 152C would require an equalities impact assessment on neighbourhood development orders.

17:45

At the heart of these amendments, which are based on suggestions from Friends of the Earth, which has worked on this issue with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and local planning networks and communities, are the existing unequal levels of participation in local decision-making. Local power dynamics come to play in planning as in other spheres, as any of us who are involved in local politics know. This is partly to do with resources, poverty and expectations, and the ability of people to communicate with official bodies, but it can also be to do with inequality and discrimination.

Experiences vary between different places, and they are not all bad, but there was some general commentary on the problem in How Fair is Britain?, the Equality and Human Rights Commission's first triennial review, which was published last year. This found that groups that share protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 are currently underrepresented in local decision-making. It also identified the decline in opportunities for individuals to contribute to decisions that affect their lives as a major barrier to moving towards a fairer society.

DCLG's most recent citizenship survey found that when given greater flexibility many public bodies tend to overlook vulnerable and underrepresented groups and that certain groups, such as younger and older people, although not, I think, older people in your Lordships' House, feel consistently excluded from the decision-making process—hence the need to put this in the legislation and to underpin the whole process with equality legislation.

I have tabled elsewhere amendments aimed at entrenching the inclusiveness of neighbourhood forums and the right to be heard, which will also help to tackle this issue and which we will reach in due course. This is an important issue, and a major issue of principle, and I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, the Minister might say that these issues are otherwise covered in legislation. If they are, fine, but if they are not I certainly support these amendments. If one needs any convincing, one can just turn to the department’s own equality impact assessment. The answer to the questions,

“Which group(s) of people have been identified as being disadvantaged by your proposals?”,

and,

“What are the equality impacts?”,

is people from black and minority ethnic communities. Where any group within the community participates less in the preparation of a neighbourhood plan, for whatever reason, there is a risk that those plans will not reflect the needs or wishes of those people. Those needs or wishes might not necessarily be linked in any way to the particular characteristics of those groups, but nevertheless might concern matters that are properly addressed through the planning system. There is, however, evidence to suggest that members of minority ethnic communities are less likely to engage with the planning system in the preparation of a neighbourhood plan. It is vital that we address that issue, so it is important that we address these propositions in relation to the Equality Act.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his amendments and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his comments. Our position is that the safeguards are in place in the neighbourhood planning provisions. Neighbourhood forums do not exercise a public function, so the public sector equalities duty does not apply. The Bill requires forums to have an open approach to their membership and to have sought secure membership from across the neighbourhood area, so there is more than an expectation that everyone will be represented in the area, particularly if there are ethnic minority groups living together, because there often are. Neighbourhood planning proposals cannot be approved unless they are compatible with human rights obligations, and will be subject to consultation, publicity requirements, independent examination and a community referendum.

We particularly want neighbourhood planning to be an open and inclusive process, and we want the whole community to be at its heart. I want noble Lords to know that we will set out regulations and requirements for consultation with and participation by the public to ensure that this is the case. I hope that with the assurance I have given that the amendment is not totally necessary—we do have in mind the areas that have been discussed—the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am grateful for that response, but the answer was not exactly what I was expecting. I thought that the Minister was going to say that neighbourhood forums were exercising a function of a public nature and therefore would be covered by existing legislation. However, she said that they would not be exercising a function of a public nature and so ought not to be covered by the legislation. The purpose of the amendment is to try to make sure that they are covered.

If what the Minister has said is correct, we will have a situation in which neighbourhood plans and development orders are treated differently in parishes from neighbourhood forums in unparished areas. Parish councils are covered by the duties in the Equality Act, and they could not possibly argue that in the production of neighbourhood plans and development orders, they were not exercising a function of a public nature. Everything they do is a function of a public nature. One group will be covered, but in the unparished areas of our large cities and towns, where on balance it is perhaps more important that the legislation should apply because many of the local people may be classed as disadvantaged, hard to reach and so on, it will not apply.

It is difficult to argue that promoting a neighbourhood development order, and particularly promoting and putting together a local plan, is not a function of a public nature. Putting together a plan at any level, whether it be for a district or a neighbourhood, has to be a function of a public nature. I have not been given the answer I expected and I think the response I got initially makes me even more concerned that this ought to be in the Bill to make sure that the Equality Act applies.

For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I give notice that we shall certainly want to have further discussions with the Government about this before the Report stage, and I may wish to bring the matter back then.

Amendment 148ZE withdrawn.

Amendments 148ZF to 148AZB not moved.

Amendments 148AA and 148AB

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

148AA: Schedule 9, page 307, leave out line 24

148AB: Schedule 9, page 307, line 31, at end insert—
“(8A) A local planning authority may withdraw an organisation or body’s designation as a neighbourhood forum if they consider that the organisation or body is no longer meeting—
(a) the conditions by reference to which it was designated, or(b) any other criteria to which the authority were required to have regard in making the designation;and, where an organisation or body’s designation is withdrawn, the authority must give reasons to the organisation or body.”

Amendments 148AA and 148AB agreed.

Amendments 148ABZA to 148ABA not moved.

Amendments 148AC and 148AD

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

148AC: Schedule 9, page 307, line 45, after “designations” insert “(or withdrawals of designations)”

148AD: Schedule 9, page 308, line 6, at end insert—
“(ba) suspending the operation of any duty of a local planning authority under paragraph 6 or 7 of Schedule 4B in cases where they are considering the withdrawal of the designation of an organisation or body as a neighbourhood forum,”

Amendments 148AC and 148AD agreed.

Amendments 148ADA to 148ADEA not moved.

Amendment 148AE

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

148AE: Schedule 9, page 309, line 34, at end insert—
“61GA Neighbourhood areas designated as business areas
(1) Whenever a local planning authority exercise their powers under section 61G to designate an area as a neighbourhood area, they must consider whether they should designate the area concerned as a business area.
(2) The reference here to the designation of an area as a neighbourhood area includes the modification under section 61G(6) of a designation already made.
(3) The power of a local planning authority to designate a neighbourhood area as a business area is exercisable by the authority only if, having regard to such matters as may be prescribed, they consider that the area is wholly or predominantly business in nature.
(4) The map published by a local planning authority under section 61G(8) must state which neighbourhood areas (if any) are for the time being designated as business areas.”

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, since the noble Baroness has not spoken to this amendment, perhaps I may ask a question. Would she regard Kensington High Street as a business area or are we talking about areas like Westfield? In other words, how little interaction has there to be with a residential neighbourhood before it is allowed to be a business area?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, somewhere with as much residential accommodation attached to it as Kensington High Street might not necessarily fit into the business category. We have already talked about areas which are mainly shopping areas, and the noble Lord mentioned Westfield as an example. Practically all of it is a business area rather than residential. That is more what we are talking about.

Amendment 148AE agreed.

Amendment 148AF

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

148AF: Schedule 9, page 309, line 43, leave out “and 61G” and insert “to 61GA”

Amendment 148AF agreed.

Amendments 148AG to 148AL not moved.

Amendment 148B

Moved by

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

148B: Schedule 9, page 311, line 4, at end insert “, and
( ) development that would be likely to harm a heritage asset of national importance or its setting.”

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, this is a probing amendment which has been tabled with the intention of exploring what seems to be a striking omission in the Bill; namely, to take explicit account of the importance in the planning context of the historic heritage, including the archaeological heritage. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, the chair of English Heritage, has authorised me to say that she supports these amendments and would speak to them if she had been able to be here today.

[Noble Lords]

She is here.

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

I beg the pardon of the noble Baroness. In due course I shall invite her to make her own observations.

We are told by ministerial sources that the national planning policy framework will soon be available in draft form and that it may be in hand for later stages of this Bill. But that does not help the present situation. It has been suggested in news reports that the national planning policy for the historic environment, PPS5, and in particular the requirement for pre-application archaeological assessment, will no longer apply to local planning decisions. It would be helpful to have an explicit ministerial assurance that the policy will remain in force and have statutory effect. This amendment would go part of the way towards reinforcing that.

Great unease has been caused in the heritage community by a recent speech by a local council leader, Councillor Alan Melton of Fenland District Council, who was reported in the Cambs Times on 22 June. The article stated:

“Regulations governing new developments including the need for archaeological surveys are to be swept aside from July 1 in a purge designed to get Fenland building again”.

I think he may have gone too far and perhaps may have realised that, but this is exactly the point. What are the safeguards which are not on the face of this Bill, and why are they not here?

The amendment, along with Amendment 149A, seeks to ensure that the local planning authority makes a determination as to whether a proposed development might harm a heritage asset of national importance. That it will normally do by referring to the local heritage environment record. The amendment places the onus on the developer to seek such a determination from the local planning authority before proceeding.

The matter is perfectly simple, and the issue is real. If the Minister can give explicit assurance that the amendment is not needed since legislation currently in place continues to have effect and will not be impaired by the passage of the Bill, and if she will kindly specify exactly what provisions are being cited, it will give great reassurance. I beg to move.

18:00

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for so beautifully moving the amendment. I only just managed to sneak into the Chamber in time, so I was not here for all his speech. Declaring my interest as chair of English Heritage, I am happy to support the amendment.

The sites that the noble Lord talked about could be designated as scheduled monuments, but they have not been so scheduled for the simple reason that, until now, they have been perfectly well protected through the planning system. We are concerned here with the possible loss of that protection through neighbourhood development.

There are about 80,000 sites of archaeological interest of national importance that could be scheduled, compared with about 20,000 that are already scheduled. The reason for our not having scheduled all the sites historically is that scheduling is a very strict, precise and quite expensive regime to implement. Many sites of national and international importance have not been scheduled because the onerous protection system has been seen as unnecessary as long as they have sat within the planning system. Neighbourhood development orders have the potential to take them out of that protection.

The NPPF may well provide for policies to protect such sites and some policy protection in the event of a normal planning application. The problem to which we return is that we do not yet have the document. I am therefore quite anxious to see whether it is explicit in saying that neighbourhood development should not interfere with such sites. I therefore strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, seeks in his amendment, which is expressly to exclude those sites and put the matter beyond question. That is what the community of people who have to guard and look after the sites want. It is also what every community in the country that is proud of its local archaeology would want.

These sites by definition hold a very important interest that extends well beyond neighbourhood boundaries because of their national significance. There should be no real objection to putting it beyond doubt that they cannot be affected, at least physically, by neighbourhood development orders.

If the amendment is not carried and we lose the protection that it would offer, the pressure will be on local authorities to schedule. That would be an extremely onerous and expensive undertaking, an unintended consequence of which would be that the matter was taken away from neighbourhoods and subjected to the national regime. To put it at its most simple, the system that we have works best. It is proportionate; it is well understood; it delivers the protections that are required. It would be an enormous shame if, inadvertently, the system was destabilised and the protections were lost. I have great pleasure in supporting the amendment.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, perhaps I may briefly extend my support to my noble friend. I had better confess that I am in the same boat as the noble Baroness, who got back just in time. I had sneaked off for a while, in the belief that I deserved some respite from this suffering, but I was tempted back by my noble friend Lord Renfrew, having had the same representations from the same groups as he has evidently had. I have not given them such assiduous attention as him, but I express my support for the careful consideration of the purport of his amendments, even if they are not perfect to achieve his objectives.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I shall speak first to Amendment 152ZZA in my own name, which is a probing amendment, before turning to my noble friend Lord Renfrew’s amendments, about which I shall explain my concern.

In order not to repeat the lengthy procedures described in Schedule 10 for the making of neighbourhood development orders, which are set out as new Schedule 4B to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, Schedule 9 inserts into the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 new Section 38C(5), which says that new Schedule 4B shall apply to the making of a neighbourhood development plan, but as modified. Paragraph (d) of that subsection refers to paragraph 8 of Schedule 4B, found on page 321 of the Bill, and states that that paragraph is to have effect as if sub-paragraphs (2)(b) and (c) and (3) to (5) were omitted. These sub-paragraphs refer to the need to have regard to preserving listed buildings and their settings, and preserving and enhancing conservation areas.

I cannot immediately understand why the Government think that in drawing up a neighbourhood plan such matters should be disregarded. My failure to understand, and therefore my query, is possibly prompted by my prior constituency experience, which was unusual. When Pevsner published his original two volumes on the buildings of inner London, the first volume was devoted wholly—apart from some buildings in Holborn—to what later became my former constituency of the City of London and Westminster South, while the second volume was devoted to what was in 1950 the 42 other constituencies in inner London; in other words, there was a major concentration of listed buildings in my former constituency. Such listing considerations weigh very heavily in my former constituency’s localisms. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could explain what is intended. As I said, my amendment is probing.

I turn to the two amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Renfrew. My noble friend is the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, in which I am simply a modest foot soldier. However, I once read Greats at Oxford, and I have done archaeology in the vicinity of the Roman wall in Corbridge in collaboration with medieval historian Maurice Keen. He and I went north together and explored mosaics of a Roman villa in a farmyard in Corbridge. I am speaking especially to Amendment 149A, but Amendment 148C is similarly connected.

My Back-Bench experience as Member for my former constituency in the years 1977 to 1979, before my party went into government, was very much influenced by concerns felt by the City of London and the Museum of London about the amount of deep-basementing that was going on and was in the process of turning the City of London into the principal continuous archaeological site in Europe, because so much extraordinarily interesting stuff was being uncovered. That work changed quite a lot of our knowledge about the city’s history. A concordat was reached between the archaeological unit at the Museum of London and the developers as a whole as to how this problem should be handled. It was that, provided there was adequate proof, the developer must always make six months available to the archaeologists to find out what they could, and the developer would pay for the entire archaeological work.

Because so much of this work was going on and was working well, there was a possibility that there would be an occasion when there was disagreement between the archaeologists and the developers. Therefore, eight years later in 1987, both sides being anxious to forestall such a problem, they created an appeal committee of three to deal with a logjam, if it were to occur, of which one member would sit on behalf of the developers, one on behalf of the archaeologists and I—because of my having once been at the Harvard Business School, because of the modest experience that I had had as an archaeologist and an ancient historian, and because I was the local MP and acceptable to both sides—would serve as the chairman. As I was also a Minister, that required permission from No. 10, which, to my agreeable surprise, my noble friend Lady Thatcher afforded me. Even more agreeably, despite the apprehensions which had prompted the creation of this committee, it never had to meet because the arrangements continued to work extremely well.

The arrangements in the City worked well because of the critical mass of the archaeology going on and because of its essential importance. However, this will not always apply across the country. The principles adduced by my noble friend’s amendments are not dissimilar to those I have described in the City, but it is very important that they should apply much more widely and by statute. That is why I support them so warmly. I have addressed my remarks to archaeology but they apply just as readily to the wider heritage scene to which my earlier Amendment 148AZZA was addressed. The fact that this goes so much more widely makes my noble friend’s amendments even more important.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, this has been a short but fascinating debate. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, said that he had left the Chamber for a respite from our deliberations, but the discussion on this amendment has given us all some relief from the turgid stuff with which we were dealing earlier. Clearly each noble Lord who spoke—the noble Lords, Lord Renfrew, Lord Newton and Lord Brooke, and my noble friend Lady Andrews—spoke with great knowledge and authority. In this job you learn something every day—and I certainly learnt something from that exchange.

If it is right that the Bill would remove protections that are in place at the moment, it must be right that amendments are put in place to address that. If the Minister in responding can assure us that that is not the case and spell it out—we need to know the detail—all well and good. Part of the problem comes back to the dear old NPPF. The Minister said earlier that it will be with us soon but her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, last week told us that it would be very soon—we seem to be going backwards on this.

My noble friend Lady Andrews made the important point that if there cannot be satisfaction on this, the risk is that a process of scheduling will take place that would involve local authorities in huge expense. It would be a huge capacity issue for them and we should seek to avoid it. We all want to do everything that we can to make sure that heritage assets, particularly those of national importance, are preserved and that the planning system plays its role in doing that. I look forward to the Minister’s response and her justifications of why she believes that that will happen and that we do not need to change the Bill.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, we are hugely sympathetic to the whole question of heritage. The noble Baroness and I discussed this before at a very early stage. We have been working with English Heritage to ensure that neighbourhood development orders do not weaken the heritage protection. The matters the noble Baroness has raised are not unfamiliar to us and I can assure her and the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, that consultations are still ongoing to ensure that there is no slip-up and that the concerns raised are addressed.

We recognise the importance of protecting heritage and all proposed neighbourhood development orders must meet certain conditions, which we discussed earlier, before they can be put to a referendum. Most importantly, they must have special regard to the protection of listed buildings and conservation areas. In addition, every plan and order must be appropriate having regard to national policy. I appreciate that that takes us back to the NPPF, but that matter will be addressed when we have a chance to discuss it. The plan or order must also be in conformity with the strategic policies in the local plan. We have made it clear from the outset that the plans must be coherent and will then have to go to independent examination.

We believe the concerns are covered with that procedure alone. All heritage aspects would be covered under the planning conditions anyway but we shall be delighted to have further consultations with English Heritage to make sure that there is no slip-up. On that basis, with those assurances, I hope the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

18:16

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, I am grateful for the various contributions. I am particularly grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, was in her place and made such effective remarks about the undesignated sites, which are a major problem. I am grateful for the support of both sides of the House.

My noble friend the Minister has given some helpful general assurances, but as we do not yet know what is in the national planning policy framework her assurances are vague and do not give much comfort. I certainly do not doubt her good intentions but she did not give a categorical or detailed assurance and she did not make specific remarks in relation to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews.

While I shall not press the amendment, I hope to do rather better on Report. It may be that the national planning policy framework will be published by then. I certainly hope so, otherwise what on earth do these assurances mean? If it is not published by then and we cannot find out how it will integrate into the Bill, we may have difficulties on Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 148B withdrawn.

Amendments 148C to 149AB not moved.

Amendments 149B and 149C

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

149B: Schedule 9, page 313, line 16, after “14” insert “or 14A”

149C: Schedule 9, page 313, line 26, leave out “section 61F or 61G” and insert “any of sections 61F to 61GA”

Amendments 149B and 149C agreed.

Amendment 149CA not moved.

Amendment 149D

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

149D: Schedule 9, page 313, line 32, leave out “section 61F or 61G” and insert “any of sections 61F to 61GA”

Amendment 149D agreed.

Amendment 150

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

150: Schedule 9, page 314, line 17, at end insert—
“( ) after subsection (4) insert—
“(4A) If there is no neighbourhood development plan in force, such documents as the local authority considers reflects the interest of the community.””

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I shall speak also to my other amendments in the group.

Amendment 150 is, to some extent, an echo of the first amendment that we debated today which was tabled by my noble friend Lord True. It looks at ways of dealing with neighbourhood planning in cities, where it will be quite difficult to get the impetus to create communities. In towns and villages, the extent of the planning gain which will be available to the communities and the way in which they care about how their open environment is developed will produce strong motivations for communities to engage with the Bill. However, that is not so in cities. Even in areas such as Battersea it is not so, let alone the poorer parts of cities. In those areas, we need to have ways of creating communities which are more attuned to what is going on in the cities, to the needs of the citizens and to their particular cares.

Amendment 150 and, more particularly, Amendment 167 attempt to produce a structure to allow a local authority to have regard to community views on planning, which are expressed in a less formal way than that set out in the Bill. There would be none of the structure of having to go through gathering all the voices, an examination and a referendum but something much more suited to an area where there is no existing geographical community and where the community will never put together the effort to go through the procedures in this Bill because the gains are too small and its own structures are too weak. Those communities should be able to gain what they can from the direction of this Bill through their more gentle expressions of opinion, which should be taken properly into account in planning decisions. Of my two amendments, Amendment 167 is the one for which I have the most affection.

On Amendment 152ZC—an amendment is never the easiest thing to find in this Marshalled List.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)]

I think you will find it at the bottom of page 13.

[Lord Lucas]

Amendment 152ZC looks at how you take the structures of this Bill and produce something of interest to local neighbourhoods. Straightforward planning and dealing with planning permissions, and their outcomes, is not really what a city neighbourhood is about. It is about its environment much more generally. When it comes to the streetscape, it is a question of whether a particular street should be pedestrianised, narrowed or given a 20 miles an hour limit. It is a question of how traffic regulations are enforced. This is a particular plague in some bits of London where councils seem to have forgotten that businesses need trade and that local people sometimes need to park in order to visit shops or neighbours. Neighbourhoods have a lot of interest in the way in which traffic regulations are set out and enforced. If one had that as part of the scope of this Bill—I understand that it may be and I look forward to what my noble friend the Minister has to say—it would produce a package which gives this Bill a much greater chance of succeeding and producing the same sort of vibrant communities within cities as I am sure it will produce in the countryside and towns.

My final amendment is Amendment 152A, which picks up on a point that has been made several times; namely, that we should find ways within the procedures set out in this part of the Bill for our neighbourhoods to become parishes. They have to go through an enormous number of hoops and great effort to produce a neighbourhood plan under this Bill, which is much more than is required by the legislation for the creation of parishes, particularly given that, having created a plan and a direction for the neighbourhood, the animal created under this Bill then dies. It is a great shame that all that effort comes to nothing. The Bill should be directed at creating a parish where the people involved want some form of continuity but it should be made easy and obvious how a parish can appear out of a neighbourhood plan in an area which is not parished. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I was discussing this matter when, some time ago, the Chief Whip suggested that I should sit down and that we should move on. I thought that that was a bit unfair but I will briefly make two points. The important point made by my noble friend Lord Lucas is that of linking neighbourhood planning with the formation of new parishes. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Shipley, who is not in his place, said that a mechanism to do that would be extremely valuable. At the moment, the problem with creating new parishes is that it requires a local governance review by the principal council, the district or unitary council, which can take quite a long time.

These principal councils are not always terribly enthusiastic about creating new parishes. If someone comes along with a petition or whatever, they will be forced to have a local governance review but they may not take it very seriously. There are a number of instances where there has been a clear demand for a new parish council on the ground and the principal council responsible has simply blocked it and said “No, you can’t have it”. If this new Bill is to be a stimulus for the creation of lots of new parishes, of which I am certainly in favour, there needs to be a way in which the Government can link that to this legislation, whether in primary legislation or in some other way, and perhaps change the advice that is given to councils about local governance reviews, thus making it much easier to carry out the review and to create the parishes. I say that as someone who lives in a borough which is now totally parished. The fact that it is totally parished is not entirely unconnected with my activities in the past 30 years.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I support the spirit of my noble friend’s amendments, particularly Amendments 150 and 167, although I slightly fell out of love with Amendment 167 when I read the last few words, which refer to,

“any guidance issued by the Secretary of State as to the definition of ‘community views’”.

That might be determined more locally. Otherwise, the light-touch approach was much to be welcomed. I also strongly agree with my noble friend’s point about traffic controls, parking and so on. In my contention, ultimately, we should move towards a position where high street shops and shop owners have a decisive role in deciding how those matters should be policed locally.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I should like to comment briefly on parishes. I can see the strength of the argument that for the purposes of these provisions we have a parish, which deals with issues around governance, probity and the democratic component. I have not thought through, which I guess we need to balance, the consequences of having parishes within an urban or a rural area where you have area committees, a district council or a unitary authority, how those sit together and the consequences of all that. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, from his experience will be able to hold forth extensively on that issue. I do not encourage him to do so on this occasion. We need to look at issues around parishes in the round and not just in relation to these provisions, but I see the benefits of parishes for the application of these provisions.

As I understood it, the thrust of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, were about not just having formal arrangements to input community views and the wishes of a community but that they must be collected in a variety of different ways, which must be right. I hesitate a little around issues where there are written expressions of community interests. Those must be included and taken up, and one should always be conscious that people communicate and express their views in different ways. Some are very forthright and able at doing it in written form and others are not always in that position. Therefore, we need to take account of that. But the idea that there should be a variety of informal and semi-formal ways for the views of communities to be brought to bear on neighbourhoods is absolutely right and one that we would support.

18:30

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am not aware that there is anything to stop views being gathered up about neighbourhood plans in whatever way. However, ultimately they have to fall into some sort of structure in order for people to understand what is going on. Whatever the observations made during these discussions, ultimately they will form part of the neighbourhood plan and will have to conform with the local development plan. With all the policies in respect of neighbourhood planning there is a great deal of flexibility as to how things are done and how they are brought to bear on it. I have tried to make that clear throughout this afternoon, although I am not sure that I am altogether persuading my noble friends behind me.

We absolutely agree that community views are core to effective planning. They are embedded in the planning system already, and we expect people’s views to be taken into account in whatever way they can be. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires councils to prepare a statement of community involvement and that is precisely what it has to be—the community involvement has to be organised in a way that makes sure that all those community views are put forward on planning matters before any statement is constructed. I do not think the amendment is necessary from that point of view, because, as I say, the flexibility is there to ensure that views—however they are collected—must be taken account of.

The noble Lord also raised the matter of traffic regulations. I hear what he says and know that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has views about how things should be done in respect of traffic in particular. However, I am not sure that traffic regulation orders could become part and parcel of the neighbourhood orders. They are, by and large, either controlled by by-laws or by national legislation and create criminal offences, so are probably not something that can just be tinkered with so that they affect only small areas. If the by-laws are used inappropriately, they can have a significantly adverse effect on the local environment, so they should be employed only when all other measures have failed. We ought not to be tinkering with them at a local level.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raised the question of parish councils and their creation. That process is probably going to take almost as long as, or longer than, creating neighbourhood forums and making the representations where there are not parish councils, which would be largely in cities. I hope that with those remarks, the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am a little puzzled, because the noble Baroness was kind enough to allow me a meeting with her officials a few days ago. I am always capable of misunderstanding things, but I had expected rather different replies from those that she has given today on the subject of how far one could reach in neighbourhood plans in order to affect things related to the local environment; such as the two illustrations I gave of the way in which streets are used, speed limits, pedestrianisation and the way in which parking rules are set out and enforced. I am clear that both those things belong with the local council but I certainly came away with the impression that neighbourhood plans could be written in such a way that they had an influence on such matters. I also came away with a much more positive view on parishing and the department’s attitude to it than the noble Baroness has conveyed today. I am puzzled by that.

Coming back to my general purpose in these amendments, we have to look carefully, if we think this is a beneficial thing—which I very much do—at how we make it beneficial within cities. There is an awful lot to be said for the amendments of my noble friend Lord True in this regard on how local neighbourhoods get designated and the flexibilities that exist as to their extent and overlap, as well as other aspects reflecting life in cities. If we are to have a process that results in a referendum, there is also a great deal to be said for saying there must be incentives for the people involved and those voting, in terms of the referendums being about things they really care about. If we go back to Battersea, what do I care about planning? The place is built up and there is no space to put anyone else. There are only little bits and pieces, which the council deals with perfectly adequately, in terms of access to light and disputes between neighbours. There is no incentive there to go through the whole process that is in this Bill. By contrast, other things about the environment and the way the council interacts with the neighbourhoods that make it up are matters of extreme concern to locals that they will pay a great deal of attention to.

My noble friend’s answers do not encompass any offer of further consultations and do not seem to incorporate the consultations that I have already had. I remain puzzled and not a little bruised as to why the Government think this is for rural communities only. I can see the advantages and importance of that, but where we need community and where coherence and community understanding are important is, by and large, in cities. Villages have pretty good communities for the most part—they can be argumentative or constructive, but villages get together at frequent intervals, in my experience, to celebrate various things or do things together. Getting them together is easy. Within cities it is much harder to do those things and it is much more important to set about creating communities. I am really concerned at the difference between the replies from my noble friend and what I had thought was the underlying direction of her department; and about the lack of interest in using the period between Committee and Report to extend this. I am also somewhat puzzled by the lack of interest from the Labour Party in how one develops communities within cities. Perhaps there is a belief that all wisdom resides in councils.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I am not quite sure why the noble Lord concluded that we have a lack of interest in developing communities within cities. I would have thought that we could demonstrate lots of places up and down the country where we have been very supportive of developing communities. I am not sure I have convinced the noble Lord here and now, but I hope to reassure him. I can see that the noble Lord is getting ticked off by his noble friends on the Front Bench—perhaps I ought to sit down or they will start on me soon.

[Baroness Hanham]

I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is disappointed. If he has had consultations that have said something different to the reply I have got, then I think I should offer to have discussions with him between now and the next stage of our proceedings.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am happy to accept that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 150 withdrawn.

Amendment 150ZZA and 150ZA not moved.

Amendments 150A and 150B

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

150A: Schedule 9, page 314, line 44, leave out from “if” to “have” in line 1 on page 315 and insert “in each applicable referendum under that Schedule (as so applied) more than half of those voting”

150B: Schedule 9, page 315, leave out lines 5 and 6 and insert—
“(5) If—
(a) there are two applicable referendums under that Schedule as so applied (because the plan relates to a neighbourhood area designated as a business area under section 61GA of the principal Act), and(b) in one of those referendums (but not the other) more than half of those voting have voted in favour of the plan,the authority may (but need not) make a neighbourhood development plan to which the proposal relates.”

Amendments 150A and 150B agreed.

Amendment 150C not moved.

Amendment 150D had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendments 150DA to 150E not moved.

Amendment 150F

Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

150F: Schedule 9, page 316, line 17, at end insert—
“( ) In preparing a neighbourhood development plan the qualifying body must—
(a) have regard to the policies set out in the development plan, approved development plan documents and other local planning policies,(b) set out in the neighbourhood development plan the ways in which the policies in the plan differ from those referred to in paragraph (a),(c) comply with the provisions of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, and(d) comply with the provisions of chapter 1 of Part VIII of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (Trees).”

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, In moving Amendment 150F, I shall speak to the other three in the group in my name; they are a mixed bag. We are still on neighbourhood development plans and orders. Amendment 150F covers various issues, some of which I think we have dealt with satisfactorily, some of which we have half dealt with and some we have not dealt with yet. It covers the preparation of the neighbourhood development plan and says that it must have regard to the existing local planning documents and explain ways in which it differs from them. I think that we have adequately dealt with that matter and do not have to discuss it any further. The amendment goes on to say—and this links back to the issue that was raised recently by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville—that the neighbourhood plan must comply with the existing legislation on listed buildings and conservation areas in the 1990 Act on those matters, and comply with the sections of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that deal with trees.

I listened with interest to the discussion about conservation areas and listed buildings and it is worth probing on that a little further. Amendment 153AKD refers to paragraphs 23 and 25 in Schedule 12, which are supposed to be consequential amendments that remove the protection normally given to conservation areas and listed buildings in the case of the neighbourhood development orders. I have only just discovered that bit of the Bill, and I could not find what they were consequential on. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has pointed me in the right direction, because I had not spotted that bit at all.

My noble friend the Minister said, or appeared to say, that it was okay to take all these provisions out of the primary legislation. Schedule 12 does that; it specifically says that in the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990:

“In section 66 (general duty as respects listed buildings in exercise of planning functions), at the end insert—

‘(4) Nothing in this section applies in relation to neighbourhood development orders’”.

Into Section 72 is added a similar provision in relation to conservation areas, which says:

“Nothing in this section applies in relation to neighbourhood development orders”.

I will not read out what the 1990 Act about listed buildings and conservation says, but clearly it gives the protection that we all understand in relation to planning applications and planning in general.

The Minister seems to say that it is okay to take out those specific provisions in the existing primary legislation because it will be somewhere else in relation to neighbourhood development orders. She read out a duty in relation to neighbourhood development orders to pay due regard—I forget the exact words. I was not clear where that wording came from. I cannot find it in this Bill but, there again, I do not claim to have absorbed every line of the Bill. It would be interesting to know where that is. There is a discussion of the national planning policy framework that is only guidance, so the worry is that the protection for listed buildings and conservation areas in neighbourhood development orders will be in the form of guidance rather than primary legislation. That seems to be a possibility and it is what I am probing further.

I have two further questions about neighbourhood development orders. Can they propose new conservation areas within their boundaries or extensions of existing conservation areas? Can they propose the abolition of existing conservation areas or changes in the boundaries of existing conservation areas?

18:45

In the amendments, we also require neighbourhood development orders to comply with the provisions of Chapter 1 of Part 8 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 relating to trees, notably about tree preservation orders. There is also a general duty in Section 197 on planning authorities in respect of trees; it requires planning permission to include appropriate provision for the preservation and planting of trees, and there are sections relating to the replanting and replacement of trees. There are then some sections that actually deal with the preservation of trees in conservation areas. Will the local planning authority still have the powers and duties under the tree preservation and planting provisions in this chapter, even if a neighbourhood development order is made for a particular site? If so, how will the powers and duties of local planning authorities be integrated into the neighbourhood planning system and, in particular, in relation to neighbourhood development orders and plans?

I have one final question for which I did not give notice, so I do not expect an immediate answer. Will Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 on sustainable drainage systems, known as SUDS, apply to developments within a neighbourhood development order? If so, will they be regarded as freestanding applications or will they become combined applications under paragraphs 8, 9 and 10 of Schedule 3? What process under paragraph 11 will be used for determining them? I realise that that is a very technical question about an Act, which we had through this House fairly recently, and I would be grateful if I could have that in writing if the Minister does not know the answer.

Amendment 152CA refers to consultation processes for the preparation of neighbourhood development orders and when they are submitted to the local planning authority. It probes questions of public consultation and says that it must comply with the local planning authority statement of community involvement. Is that the case? The parish council or neighbourhood forum under this amendment must also adopt other means as they consider reasonable to bring the matter to the attention of local people. The amendment also says that when a draft neighbourhood development order is submitted to the local planning authority, that authority must carry out the requirement for consultation with local people, which would apply to ordinary planning applications as set out in the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2010.

How will consultations with statutory consultees be handled for neighbourhood development orders? I refer to the Highways Authority, the Environment Agency, English Heritage, other local authorities and so on. Will there be a requirement on parish councils or neighbourhood forums when preparing a neighbourhood development order, or will that consultation wait until the draft order is submitted to the local planning authority—or will it be both?

Finally, a very important amendment is Amendment 153ZF, which would extend the right to be heard, which exists in local plan-making, to neighbourhood plans. The wording is from the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 as it applies to local plan hearings. This is another equalities issue. As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said not long ago, less articulate people are often better making their views known in person than in writing. Schedule 10(9)(1) says:

“The general rule is that the examination of the issues by the examiner is to take the form of the consideration of written representations”.

But there can be a hearing if the examiner considers it necessary to ensure adequate examination of the issue or for a person to have a fair chance to put a case. Many people do not have the literacy skills to be able to take part comfortably or confidently in complex written exchanges, but they are much better at putting their views across in person. The purpose of the amendment is that people should have a choice. I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA, which concern the design considerations in neighbourhood plans. This House contains many eminent champions of good design, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who have added their names to the amendment and are in their places today. I would only say, in declaring my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, that my experience of looking after housing projects has proved to me that poor design not only alienates and depresses those who have to suffer it but is wastefully expensive because it does not last.

Contrast the disasters of now demolished council housing from the 1960s and 1970s with the enduring popularity of the homes built many decades earlier in the garden villages of Rowntree’s New Earswick, York, and Cadbury’s Bourneville, Birmingham. Last week the president of the RIBA, Ruth Read, launched an excellent report, Good Design: it all adds up, which the relevant Minister, John Penrose, highly commended. Design matters, so it seems entirely right that neighbourhood plans should be just as mindful of the requirements of good design as the local development plans of local authorities themselves. The first of these two amendments places a responsibility on neighbourhoods when engaging in neighbourhood planning to have,

“regard to the desirability of achieving good design”.

This replicates precisely the existing obligation on local authorities which resulted from an amendment in your Lordships’ House to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill in 2004.

Amendment 153ZA would mean that when neighbourhood plans are examined, as they will have to be under the Bill's provisions, the independent examiners would have special regard to the desirability of achieving good design. It may be argued that this issue can be addressed at one remove, through national or local government planning requirements. Publication of the national planning policy framework—when we finally see it—may shed light on the emphasis to be given nationally to issues of good design, and because the neighbourhood plan must be,

“in general conformity with the strategic”

priorities of the local development plan, good design could perhaps be implied through that route. However, the experts tell me that this is likely to be too weak a link.

Ministers in another place have helpfully accepted an amendment that requires the independent examiners to pay special regard to conservation areas and listed buildings. It seems equally important and worthy of an amendment to require the examiners to have special regard to design quality. I know that the decentralisation Minister, Greg Clarke, also favours good design and I hope that these amendments will appeal to the Government.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, in supporting Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA on the crucial aspect of the good design of the places that people live in, which has such wide support from professional and interest groups, I take comfort from the Minister’s undertaking in her letter to me of 20 June:

“We remain committed to promoting the highest standards of architecture and design”.

Indeed, this is what the Government did in also undertaking to honour the provisions relating to design in the previous housing and planning Acts. Those provisions, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, bound local authorities but not neighbourhoods because neighbourhoods did not come into being as the deciders of planning until the present Bill, so it is only consistent that the duty to have regard to good design should be extended to neighbourhoods, as Amendment 152ZA says.

Amendment 153ZA is consistent with the Government's undertaking and I need hardly repeat the evidence of the profound impact that design has on enjoyment, security, amenity, health and leisure. I am sure the Government would agree that communities should be enabled to make good design choices.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have tabled three amendments in this group. I apologise that I missed my amendments in the earlier group, because the Committee is making such breakneck progress on this Bill, but I wish to speak now. However, I support both the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the cross-reference by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to Schedule 12 and the need to clarify the position in relation to conservation areas and the setting and general appearance of buildings, which from Schedule 12 seems not to apply to neighbourhood plans. My amendments attempt to relate neighbourhood plans to the broader planning structure, which still exists. The Government have, of course, deleted any application of regional spatial plans but there are still national policies, national advice and the local plan.

This part of the Bill, paragraph 8 of the new schedule in Schedule 10, relates to the issues which the examiner should take into account when considering neighbourhood plans. It seems to me that under paragraph 8(2), there is a weak relationship between the requirements on the examiner and the reference to national policies. We all know that “having regard to” national policies and advice containing guidance means that you can take no notice of it. Indeed, that is often the case. I am suggesting a rather stronger form of words: that the examiner should consider whether the plan “is compatible with” the national policies and the advice issued by the Secretary of State and that, in relation to the local plan in paragraph 8(2)(d), rather than the order being,

“in general conformity with the strategic policies”

of the local authority’s plan it should be in,

“conformity with the objectives and policies”,

of that plan. It seems to me that general conformity is, again, fairly weak. If the examiner were to find that the plan is in general conformity or had taken into account the Secretary of State's advice but then totally ignored it, there would be problems.

We need to place some tighter requirements on the examiner in this regard. I am all for flexibility and localism but if we are maintaining a structure of planning, there needs to be interrelationship between its various layers. My three amendments in this section, starting with—I get lost in this alphabet soup—Amendment 153ZZA, therefore would attempt to tighten up the form of wording in this section. I commend them to the Minister.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I strongly support the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Best. I shall give an example by going back to some of the things that my noble friend Lord Lucas was saying about Battersea, because in 1967 I bought a small house in Kersley Street, Battersea. When I went to buy it, I was told by the Battersea authorities to be very careful because the mayor of Battersea wished to sweep away all that area. Those houses were built in about 1893 and now it is a conservation area and all that, thank goodness, and is a gem in its way.

To be honest, on this question of design, I am afraid that developers and architects of the 1950s and 1960s have an enormous amount to answer for. There has only very recently been salvation. The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to the demolition of some of the ill considered, ill designed and ill constructed blocks which were put up in the place of extremely desirable housing for people. One thinks immediately of places such as World's End in the old days. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the Government are as united as we are in making sure that this is protected fully for the future.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, unusually, because I nearly always agree with almost everyone who has spoken, I want to express a note of scepticism which I even dare to hope might be helpful to my noble friend on the Front Bench, if she is looking for that. I am a bit sceptical about this because what is now regarded as dreadful 1950s/1960s stuff was regarded as good design at the time. This is totally subjective and I do not understand how it is going to be interpreted. In any circumstances, people will have regard to design but whether it is good design may depend on whether it is thought to be so at the moment. It may be thought a totally rubbish design in 20 or 30 years’ time, which is exactly what has happened, so what is the point of writing it in?

[Baroness Whitaker]

Would the noble Lord agree that if local people participate in the choice of the design, as is good design practice, it is more likely to suit their needs?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

That is a slightly separate question of what they feel about their area at the time, which clearly ought to be taken into account. It is not necessarily the same as good design.

19:00

[Lord Marlesford]

Perhaps I may say to my noble friend that what was lacking in those days was, frankly, design. The object was to put up buildings in a somewhat Leninist style and atmosphere, cramming people into the smallest possible space with little consideration of their welfare and long-term benefit. What we are doing now is emphasising that design should be included where it was not in the past.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I will avoid getting into a discussion about design. However, I would like to ask a question which underlies the debate. Mention has been made of the need to be in conformity with the local development plan. I have heard that if there is no local plan in place, or no core strategy, there cannot be a neighbourhood plan or a neighbourhood development order. I have not been able to pin this down in the Bill. I wonder whether the Minister can help me on that. Given the number of local authorities which are still moving towards fulfilling the provisions of the relevant planning Act that was passed some years ago, this is a serious issue. However optimistic the Government are about the progress that local authorities will make, this is nevertheless a major consideration.

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

My Lords, I did not intend to intervene in this debate about design, but I have been prompted by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, to do so. I am married to an architect. Before we were married, I took my wife-to-be to meet my parents. My father was a doctor. He started needling her about architecture and design. Eventually, she turned round and said, “That, of course, is the difference between your profession and my profession. In your profession, your mistakes die, in our profession they live on”. That might be a rather flippant way of introducing a note of caution in all this. My view is that we do not allow good architecture to flourish in many respects, partly because we are hemmed in by rules and guidance on good design, which are sometimes rigidly enforced. We have to ask what sort of good design we are trying to promote. Is it, for example, the good design that the Prince of Wales has championed, sometimes controversially, or is it other aspects of good design which perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Whitaker are championing? We should debate what good design is, but what is good design in one place will not be good design in another. We have to have the flexibility to ensure that communities can respond to this and to allow good architecture to take root and flourish in this country.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I remind my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd that however good or bad we think the Prince of Wales’s views on architecture are, he interfered in a very big planning application in respect of Chelsea Barracks. I do not think that that is right.

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

I was not suggesting that we necessarily follow the Prince of Wales, but the very fact that he has provoked that controversy demonstrates, if I may say so, the point that I am making—that what is good design to one person is not good design to another.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, as there was no Conservative name on Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA, I am happy to join the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. Indeed, I will not argue the toss with him as to which of us is metaphysically adding our name, but it is desirable that it should have Conservative support. Having said that—I have said similar things on many other such Bills in the past—in the context of what my noble friend Lord Newton said, I was confronted, as then Secretary of State for National Heritage, with a decision about a building in Bethnal Green by Denys Lasdun. The building was not listed—the department had the responsibility for listing—and was threatened with demolition by the local authority. No intervention occurred because of the listed building consent issue. We had to decide in the department whether we should list it. It was in our view a fine piece of architecture and design. We eventually decided that we would, knowing that the Secretary of State for the Environment—the noble Lord, Lord Deben—would have to make the decision about listed building consent, so in that sense we transferred the problem to him. However, he had not dissimilar views to ours about architecture. Since we no longer had Chinese walls in the Department of the Environment, he took no decision on giving listed building consent. The local authority had wanted to demolish the building and the only housing association that was interested could not raise the money to take it over. However, a private property company took it over. It is now absolutely packed with private-sector tenants who think that it is a marvellous building. Therefore, it is wrong to be dismissive of buildings constructed in earlier eras just because they were not necessarily in line with taste at that moment.

I have one other thing to say before my noble friend Lord Hodgson gets up. As my noble friend Lord Greaves was kind enough to mention my name in connection with my Amendment 152ZZA three groupings ago, I shall take the liberty of going back to it, unless your Lordships’ House wishes me to move it when we come to it shortly in the proper order of the Bill. My noble friend the Minister did not give me an answer to my probing amendment at the time that we debated it three groupings ago. I was expecting her to say that she would write to me because I agree that the matter was complicated. If it is simpler for her now to say when she replies to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that she will write to me, I would regard that as a wholly satisfactory resolution.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Best. He made a powerful statement about the importance of good design and referred to architecture and design. Since we are discussing the Localism Bill, I hope that my noble friend will be able to reassure me as regards the importance of using local materials and local design when building locally. When I hear about national policies I slightly fear that there will be a national standard of good design which will not reflect the building styles and building standards of different parts of our country.

One of the most depressing aspects of the present situation is that if you were blindfolded and put down by helicopter in a perfectly nice new development, whether it was in Truro, Norfolk or Newcastle, you would not be able to tell where you were because we are now building to standard designs, built by national housebuilders, which do not greatly reflect what goes on in the locality where they are based. Therefore, historic traditions of building which are different across the country are gradually being wiped out to the detriment of local pride and local community feeling. I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that when she winds up.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to Amendment 153. I would be very grateful if my noble friend could enlarge a little on the relevant strengths of “having regard to” and “in general conformity with”. To take a particular illustration, Hampshire has a policy that there should be no new development in the countryside. Does that mean that there is no point in neighbourhood planning in Hampshire?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. On Amendment 153ZC, which relates to the weight given to emerging documents, I think that that has been discussed and I will not pursue it at this point. I have been reassured that emerging documents are given weight. Amendment 153ZD is relevant to the short debate we have just had about design, which strikes me as being a rather pleasant and agreeable way of spending an afternoon in the Moses Room when the Education Bill is not being discussed there. I do not want to detain the Committee on that, but I am absolutely certain that what my noble friend Lord Hodgson, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others have said must be right because if this Bill is about localism the vernacular should matter. Local people like their vernacular and they like building that is in keeping, whatever the design is, if that design is good. Local authorities as well as national housebuilders have failed in that respect over the years. I do not mind a little cajoling to them in the Bill, but we have to be careful because design, as I think Lewis Carroll said, is probably “what I say it is”. There is a problem there.

Amendment 153ZD is related to that because it is about how the examiner deals with neighbourhood planning orders. A case in our authority involved the Government intervening on our existing core strategy to say that it must include high-rise building. Notwithstanding that there was cross-party agreement against it and that hundreds of people protested against it, a planning inspector imposed an extension of the ugliest building in our borough on the basis that the existing core strategy provided for such buildings. The local authority, with the strong support of local people, is trying to revise its plans. It takes a long time to revise a local development framework and my right honourable friend Secretary of State has said that he hopes to accelerate it.

There will be circumstances in neighbourhood planning where local communities say, for example, “We do not want any more high-rise”. However, if an examiner looks, as that examiner did, at the previous building and says, “Your existing plan says let’s have some high-rise”, then unless we include a provision such as my Amendment 153ZD to allow a local authority to assent to an order that is not in compliance, we may find that neighbourhood planning is defeated. Perhaps I am being oversuspicious, but there might be circumstances where the will of the local community is clear and the examiner should be able to give weight to that informal opinion.

I will deal with Amendment 153ZE very briefly. It refers to the situation in London and the definition of localism. I am simply saying that if an emerging policy is not necessarily in compliance with the higher-authority policy and there is tension between the policies of the mayor and the borough as regards its neighbourhood plans, then the examiner should, in circumstances where those matters are being considered, give greater weight to the more local of the two emerging policies. I do not expect an answer from my noble friend on that or the other amendment to which I referred, but both are significant.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

This has been an interesting group of amendments. I certainly support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Whitty which seek to strengthen the relationship of NDOs with national policies and the strategic policies of the local development framework.

The noble Lord, Lord True, focused on emerging policies, when the local development framework is not in place or is being revised. I certainly see the thrust of his point. How one tests those emerging policies and encapsulates them, when they are in the process of being consulted on, is an issue. However, I take his point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked what happens if there is no local development plan in place. Does that preclude a neighbourhood development plan? My understanding is that it does not, and thereby hangs a potential problem. If the only level of guidance available for the neighbourhood development plan is the NPPF, assuming that we see it at some stage, it is inevitably going to be written in relatively high-level terms. That is its purpose. It proclaims the benefits of tearing up a thousand pieces of paper and condensing them into 40 or 50 pages. We shall have to see how many there are in due course. Therefore, the leeway that that gives a neighbourhood development plan is an interesting point. If we were able to embed in the Bill issues around sustainable development and its definitions, it might help.

I support the thrust of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, about design issues. My understanding is that design is not just about individual buildings and their quality but about the landscape, the environment, the relationships between buildings and how the whole urban fabric works. Although there may be different views on the aesthetics of any particular building, and views may change over time, we all know and can spot situations where design has not properly been taken into account, and you get grotty buildings that the planners and architects often have no intention of living in themselves. The thrust of the argument on good design is absolutely right.

The issue is particularly pertinent because the funding for CABE has, I understand, been withdrawn and only a minority of people from that organisation are transferring to the merged body with the Design Council. Therefore, the opportunity of keeping focused on design is especially important.

The concept of trying to ensure that the neighbourhood development plan must have regard to or relate to the development plan must be right, and the concepts of sustainable development should be embodied in the neighbourhood development plan. That is why it would be good to get those provisions enshrined in the Bill in primary legislation. I hope that those comments from our Front Bench have indicated the level of support that we would give.

19:15

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, in my excitement over design and Denys Lasdun, I failed to speak to Amendment 152D in my name, relating to Schedule 10. The new national planning policy framework will form an important plank in planning for localism, as well as for the wider planning system. It is therefore important that the new document continues to protect the historic environment. The current suite of policy planning guidance notes and statements is, as your Lordships will know, to be replaced by the NPPF. National policy is a vital tool in the planning processes and it expands and enlarges upon statute. The current planning policy statement 5 on planning for the historic environment was introduced in March 2010. In the short period since, it has worked extremely successfully and has been supported by the heritage and development sectors. The Heritage Alliance, to which I alluded earlier, is responding separately to the Department for Communities and Local Government on the content of the NPPF. National planning policy guidance is referred to at page 321 of the Bill at paragraph 8(2)(a) of new Schedule 4B to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which requires regard to be taken of the NPPG. However, this provision is not strong enough. Development could be approved under the neighbourhood development order process without the current requirement for predetermination, information and consultation. We talked earlier about archaeology. Without predetermination of archaeological work, fewer unknown sites will be identified and, as a result, such sites may be destroyed without any adequate record, and development work may be delayed with additional costs. That is why I and others on behalf of the Heritage Alliance have proposed our amendment.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for a very interesting debate. It has circled around a number of areas. Most specifically, the concentration has been on design and the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best. We believe that design is sufficiently well taken care of and safeguarded in the planning policies. One needs to take account of the fact that design is very subjective. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, made that point. However, nothing within the development of a neighbourhood plan would stop neighbourhoods saying what sorts of designs they would like. It would not necessarily be binding on the inspector but it would be guidance for the future—the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, talked about predetermination —when developers were going to develop and had to hold predetermination discussions with the neighbourhood.

I think that I will resist taking it any further today by putting it more strongly in the Bill, as proposed in the amendments. I understand exactly what the noble Lord is saying; and I understand those who say that this is a very difficult area to deal with because what is good design in one person's mind is not appropriate in that of another.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, asked whether we would include in the Bill the question of using local stone, and so on. No, but the response I have just made about design probably covers the same. If the local neighbourhood wanted to have Cotswold stone as the only means to use in developments, there is nothing to stop it saying in the plan that it believes that Cotswold stone would be the ideal. It would then have to discuss that with developers before any suggestion of a development order or planning permission was given. Once again, I do not think that that is suitable for the Bill, but it can be taken into account.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I absolutely understand what my noble friend is saying, but she will understand that a local community trying to get a national housebuilder to move off-plan—of its standard houses—will be very difficult. There will be inequality of arms in a local community trying to deal with a national housebuilder. The housebuilder will have its designs and will say, “This is how it works”. No account will be taken of what the locality has produced historically in either design or materials.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, that is a rather depressing view of how neighbourhood forums and neighbourhood plans will be developed. The whole point of having a neighbourhood plan is to have the local community say what they would like, how they would like it and how they would want something constructive. The local community is in a much stronger position. We have already discussed predetermination, but developers will have to go to talk to the neighbourhood before they get planning permission under a development order about how they will develop it. The whole thrust and emphasis is that they should be able to have discussions, make plans and carry them out according to what the neighbourhood wants. If the neighbourhood wants Cotswold stone and the developers do not, there will be an interesting battle of arms as to who comes out on top, but as the neighbourhood holds in its hands the development order and the planning permission, I rather suspect that it would be in a strong position.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked whether communities can promote development outside urban areas through neighbourhood planning. If neighbourhood planning is pro-growth—we want to extend communities, developments and housing—communities could use a neighbourhood plan to promote a higher level of growth than in the local plan, but it would still need to have regard to national policy. Practically all the answers that I give tonight will be that plans have to be in general conformity with either national or local policies.

[Baroness Whitaker]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness, but I am not quite clear how the national policy planning framework will bite on neighbourhood decisions. How are they bound by the national framework?

[Baroness Hanham]

They will be bound by the local development plan, and the national policy framework will impact on them through that. The local development plan must have more than regard to the national planning policy framework, and that will bite through the local authorities’ plans.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

As I understand it, they have to be consistent with the strategies in the local development plan. Do those strategies encompass design?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I do not think so, because I do not think that design is part of the planning consideration, for the very reason that we discussed: design is fairly subjective. I remember that when we were discussing the Planning Bill in 2008 there was a huge discussion on design. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that it could not be a requirement because everyone saw things differently, although we would want to ensure that development was as conforming as it could be.

[Baroness Andrews]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. I go back to the point raised by my noble friend Lady Whitaker. It concerns conformity where there is no local development plan or where the local development plan does not contain the policy. Neighbourhood framework plans are required to conform only to the LDF, not the national policy planning framework. Where there is no LDF, they are not required to conform. That is where the problem will lie. That was the problem identified in Amendment 152D, which I think requires further thought and answer. That breaks the link of conformity to the neighbourhood plan. That is a great weakness in the resilience of the planning framework as a whole.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am happy to write on that and to have further discussion, but my understanding is as I have set out. If that is wrong, I will come back to the matter.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked: can you have a neighbourhood plan with no core strategy in place? The answer is yes. That may cover some of what we have been talking about. The national policy would still apply and the examiner and local planning authority can consider the weight to give any local plan policies. Existing local plan policies would of course take us back beyond the local development framework to the unitary development plan if they have not got further than that, so most authorities, even the most dilatory, will have something in place. We have dealt with design and the plans. I will certainly come back on the national framework, although I think that I have now answered on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked about consultation with the public and the statutory consultees. Those requirements will be set out in regulation, but they will be requirements. There will be consultation both before and after the submission of the draft plan to the local planning authority with both categories. The noble Lord asked: what protection is there for listed buildings and can neighbourhood development orders change or propose conservation areas? Schedule 4B, in paragraph 8, sets out the protection for listed buildings and conservation areas where neighbourhood development orders are considered. We have already made clear that we take that very seriously. Can a neighbourhood development order propose conservation areas? They cannot change them, they can only propose them.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked about tree preservation orders. No, tree preservation orders are covered by basic conditions in relation to national and local policies. He asked: can plans or orders propose new conservation areas? One answer says yes, the other says no.

[Lord Berkeley]

What is the answer?

[Baroness Hanham]

I will have to come back on that.

In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, neighbourhood plans and orders will have to have appropriate regard to national policy, as in the past. I will try to answer the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, this time, because he gets upset if I do not. On neighbourhood planning in cities, the amendments would strengthen the requirement on neighbourhood plans and orders to meet local planning policies. Our test is general conformity with the strategic policies and the local plan. We believe that that strikes the right balance, ensuring that neighbourhood planning proposals are in general conformity with strategic local policies, giving flexibility to determine those issues that are rightly dealt with at community level. I do not think that that answers what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked me and I shall write to him. I hope that I have covered reasonably satisfactorily a number of the points that were made.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hanham]

I apologise to my noble friend Lord Brooke for not having picked up the matter that he raised and I shall write to him.

19:30

[Lord True]

Will my noble friend also very kindly undertake to respond to my point on Amendment 153ZD where neither the local community nor the council wish to have the existing policy imposed by an external authority? I should like a reply on that point but it can be a written reply and I shall be very grateful for it.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I shall certainly do that. With those replies, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for her answers. I shall write to her saying what else I need.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, it seems a long time since I introduced this group of amendments and it has been a very interesting discussion. I am very grateful to the Minister for dealing valiantly with questions flying at her from all corners of the Committee. I am not sure that she has satisfactorily answered all mine yet but I shall not pursue them any further tonight. I shall read Hansard carefully and take up matters afterwards.

I am not going to get involved in the design argument, other than to say cynically that good design is what I like and bad design is what I do not like. However, that is a cynical view. In many cases you can more easily recognise bad design than good design and get consensus on that, but the important point is that design and style are very different things. You can have good design in almost every style of building and architecture, and that is the crucial point that people often miss.

I said that I was not going to get involved in design and then started talking about it. I shall now shut up and beg leave to withdraw Amendment 150F.

Amendment 150F withdrawn.

Amendments 151 to 152ZC not moved.

Schedule 9, as amended, agreed.

Schedule 10 : Process for making of neighbourhood development orders

Amendment 152ZD not moved.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.33 pm.

Schools: Funding Reform

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Statement

19:33

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in another place:

“With your permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on our plans to reform school funding.

As Members from across the House will know, the current systems for funding schools—both for their revenue and capital needs—are too complex and lack transparency, which is why I want to make the way we fund all schools fairer, simpler and more efficient. I want to turn to capital spending first.

Capital investment is crucial to education reform but, at a time of economic difficulty, we need to ensure that we are getting the maximum value for every penny we spend and we must ensure that tight resources are targeted on those most in need. In order to ensure we could target money on those areas in absolutely greatest need, I had to take the difficult decision last year to stop a number of school rebuildings planned under the Building Schools for the Future programme. In areas where planning was most advanced, more than 600 projects will go ahead, but other projects were stopped, and I recognise the deep disappointment that that provoked in communities where hopes had been raised. But we had to ensure that money was spent efficiently, and the design of the old BSF scheme was not as efficient as it could have been. Specifically, it did not prioritise schools in the worst condition and it did not procure new buildings as cheaply as possible.

In order to ensure we spent money properly, I asked Sebastian James of the Dixons Store Group to review the entire DfE approach to capital funding. His report makes compelling reading and I commend it to the House. He found that the whole capital system was bedevilled by a complex allocation process with multiple funding schemes, a lack of good-quality building condition data, inefficiency in building design, a lack of expertise when it came to improving new buildings, a failure to make procurement as efficient as possible, a lack of clarity on maintenance, and overly complex regulatory and planning requirements.

I am grateful to Sebastian James for his exceptionally thorough work and I wish to accept the majority of his recommendations, subject to a thorough consultation process over coming months.

Specifically, I have accepted the recommendation to conduct a full survey of the school estate. The last Government stopped collecting any data on school condition in 2005, which has made fair distribution of funding much harder. I have also accepted the review’s recommendation significantly to revise the school premises regulations so that a single, clear set of regulations applies to all schools. I intend to consult fully on this in the autumn.

In addition, I have accepted his recommendation to move towards greater standardisation of design. One of the aspects of the BSF programme that Mr James criticised was that each school was separately designed, costing unnecessary millions in consultancy fees and often resulting in buildings which were not fit for purpose. Greater standardisation will reduce costs, improve quality and limit the opportunity for error.

However, I recognise that in the short term schools around the country are facing real and pressing problems. The most pressing problem is ensuring that every child has a school place. In some local areas, there are simply not enough school places to meet rising demand. Local authorities have told me that insufficient attention has been given to this issue in the past. That is why I have already doubled the sums available to meet this pressure, announcing £800 million of additional spending given directly to local authorities to meet the demand for school places.

Today, thanks to efficiencies and savings we have identified, including in BSF projects, I can announce an additional £500 million to fund more new school places in those areas of greatest need. Funds will be allocated this financial year to the local authorities with the greatest demographic pressures so that they can provide enough places, especially at primary schools, in September 2012. Details of those allocations will be provided over the summer and finalised in the autumn.

But that is not all. I am also aware that many of our existing school buildings across the country are in desperate need of repair. I am grateful to honourable Members from all parties who have shown me and my ministerial colleagues schools in their constituencies which need investment. The energy and skill with which so many colleagues have lobbied underlines how effectively so many honourable Members represent the most needy in their constituencies.

We have already made available £1.4 billion this year to deal with maintenance problems. Overall, we are spending more on school buildings every year of this Parliament than the last Government spent in every year of their first two Parliaments. But I want to do more, which is why today I am launching a new privately financed school building programme to address the schools in the worst condition wherever they are in the country.

This programme will be open to local authorities and schools that had been due funding via BSF but, critically, it will also be open to those which, despite real problems, had never been promised BSF funding. I believe strongly that those in genuine need should receive the funding they deserve, and no part of the country should be favoured over any other. Individual schools and local authorities will all be able to apply and I am launching the application process today.

The scheme will be rigorously policed to ensure that we do not incur the excessive costs incurred by previous privately financed schemes. The programme should cover between 100 and 300 schools, with the first of these open in September 2014, and it is expected to be worth around £2 billion in up-front construction costs.

Some of those local authority areas which had experienced the termination of their BSF projects asked for a judicial review of my department’s decisions. In February, Mr Justice Holman found in favour of the department on the substantive matters in dispute. But he found against me on procedural grounds and asked me to look again at the decision in six local authorities. He stressed that the decision to restore all, some or none of the projects was a matter for me.

Over the past few months, Ministers and officials have listened carefully to the case made by the six local authorities and I am grateful to them for the constructive way in which they have presented that case. I have today written to those authorities to let them know that I am minded to indemnify them for contractual liabilities resulting from the stage their projects had reached, but I am not minded to restore their specific BSF projects. They now have a further opportunity to make representations to me before I take a final decision.

I appreciate that the local authorities and their representatives will be disappointed. But let me also be clear that this decision, if confirmed after any representations have been made, does not mean an end to new school buildings in their areas. Those local authorities will all be eligible for support from the new programmes I am establishing to cater for population growth in the areas most in need and the new programme to cover the worst dilapidation. That is central to my reasoning on why I am minded not to restore their projects. I want to ensure absolute fairness in the distribution of the resources at my disposal.

Because the previous Government chose not to collect data on the condition of school buildings after 2005, I do not have the facts to judge how the needs of these schools compare with the needs of other schools around the country. The fairest thing that I believe I can do is to help to meet the costs which might arise from the stage these projects had reached and then to invite the affected schools to apply to the new school rebuilding programme, and be assessed on an equal footing with everyone else, on the basis of need. And, of course, should any of these local authorities have severe need pressures, they are likely to receive a portion of the £500 million fund that I have announced today.

I would now like to turn to schools revenue funding. The current funding system is, of course, extremely complex, opaque and often unfair. Most colleagues will have lived with the inconsistencies for years now, as similar schools in different parts of the country received widely differing and inequitable levels of funding. The problems with the system that we inherited have recently been underlined by concerns expressed over academies funding. Under the system set up by the last Government, academies received money in lieu of services that would previously have been provided by their local authority. But local authorities continued to receive the same funding as if they were still providing these services. That meant that local authorities were being, relatively speaking, overfunded, for duties they no longer discharged. So, at the spending review we announced that, from now on, we would deduct money from local authorities to take account of the fact they no longer provided services to academies.

The huge success of the academies programme, with 803 academies open and over 800 more in the pipeline, has meant we need to look at the issue again. A number of local authorities have asked us to reconsider the amount of money deducted. So today, I am publishing a consultation document for local authorities explaining the basis on which it is intended that this money will be deducted in this year and next. But this area is only one where the funding system we inherited is failing to meet the needs of the 21st century and much wider reform is needed. So today, we are also publishing a consultation proposing a fair and comprehensive reform of the way in which schools revenue funding is calculated overall.

At present, similar schools in different areas can receive very different amounts of funding for their pupils. This is not fair on head teachers, on teachers or on pupils. That is why I am proposing a new fairer national funding formula, with appropriate room for local discretion, in order to have a simpler, fairer and transparent system. The problems with the current system run very deep, and we will not be able to solve them overnight. We want to consult to ensure everyone’s views are heard on how much change schools can cope with. We will not introduce change until we are confident in the new approach and certainly not before 2013, and we will ensure that there are substantial transitional arrangements. But we are determined to start moving as soon as we can towards a system which ensures all children are given the right level of funding to meet their needs.

Taken together with our investment in 100 new teaching schools announced last week, our investment of an additional £300 million in the early years and an extra £2.5 billion in the pupil premium, I believe that we can now begin to ensure that our schools are funded in a way which is modern, fair and just”.

19:44

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I thank the Minister for repeating that Statement. On capital, some might say that scrapping the most transformational school building programme for decades and replacing it with a survey is not the most convincing evidence of commitment to improving school buildings. However, I welcome the action that the Government are now taking to sort out the mess and uncertainty left in the wake of the Secretary of State's precipitous decision to axe the Building Schools for the Future programme.

High-quality buildings and facilities are indeed essential to high-quality teaching and learning. It is a pity that the Government could not acknowledge what the National Audit Office called the crumbling school infrastructure that my Government inherited in 1997 and the outstanding progress made in rebuilding schools since then. The replacement for BSF, but for up to only 300 schools in the worst condition, is to be private finance. Can the Minister explain the terms of this scheme and what will be the long-term revenue consequences for schools and local authorities of using private sector funding? Does the Minister agree that the full survey of the school estate, to which he referred, should be completed speedily and can he say when that will be published? On the funding for extra school places, can he explain how the allocation of that funding will take account of plans for free schools in the local area and the surplus places that will follow in those areas consequently from having a surfeit of schools?

I turn to revenue, about which the Statement strangely said relatively little. In principle, I welcome the consultation on how best to fund schools and also the decision to consult widely, although with schools breaking up this week they may not feel that they have the full 12 weeks in which to consider this detailed document. The Government say they want to achieve fair and comprehensive reform of the way in which schools revenue funding is calculated. The Minister has also said that similar schools in different areas can receive different amounts of funding and that that is not fair. But does the Minister accept that equal funding is not necessarily fair funding? Does he accept that schools in areas with more social or economic challenges or with more challenging pupils will need more funding in order to give those children a fair chance? None the less, will the move to a national formula ensure that schools with the highest needs will receive more funding?

The Government's proposal to move to a new national funding formula with local discretion is, on the face of it, seductive. It sounds as though it will be simpler and more transparent. However, even a cursory glance at the consultation document this afternoon, which outlines, for example, the proposal to move to three or four funding blocks, the methods for calculating them, the complicated proposal for a new combined area cost adjustment, the fact that local authorities will still receive funding through the formula grant for other education services, to name just a few of the issues, suggests it may not be so simple.

Getting money to 25,000 schools, especially when the Government are pressing as many as possible to come out of the maintained sector, is inherently complex. The devil will be in the detail and the detail will show whether we really end up with a simpler system that schools and parents can understand and support. So can the Minister explain what he expects the outcome to be of moving towards a national funding formula for schools in deprived areas and for schools with higher proportions of children with additional or high needs? With a national formula, what continued role does the Minister envisage for local authorities in ensuring that funding to schools reflects local needs and circumstances? Will the Government now publish the modelling, which they must surely have done, so that we can see which schools will gain and which will lose in the new system?

Indeed, the Minister has acknowledged that changing the system in the manner proposed will result in many winners and many losers, so I welcome the decision not to introduce any changes before 2013-14 and to make transitional arrangements. I hope that those arrangements will include some kind of tapering to ensure a gradual transition to what may be a sizeable change to their budget for many schools. The Government want most schools to come out of the maintained system and become academies and free schools, so the parallel announcement to review academy funding is both necessary and welcome. Does the Minister agree that the funding system should ensure parity of funding between maintained schools and academies, based on need? Does he agree that academies should be subject to the same reporting framework in respect of the public money that they receive?

The consultation proposes three models for academy funding, but gives no bases for respondents to evaluate the different options. Will the Government now publish the data necessary to illustrate what would be the different impacts of those three models? We know that recently the Secretary of State was forced under threat of legal action to agree to a review of funding for academies. Will the Minister update the House on the progress of that review, and how it will link to the consultation that he announced today?

There are one or two notable gaps in the consultation, especially in relation to children with additional or high levels of need, and to post-16 funding. Will the Minister assure the House that the consultation will take account of the responses to the special educational needs Green Paper, as parents of children with special educational needs will have concerns over funding levels as a result of today's announcement? Furthermore, Ministers were silent today about 16 to 19 funding, which is particularly unfortunate as it is the subject of a critical report from the Education Select Committee. Many people are concerned that the changes to post-16 funding and the reductions in funding to school sixth forms could see some forced to close. The Secretary of State has promised a review of post-16 funding. It would make sense to conduct it concurrently with the consultation that he announced today. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

Finally, the question of most concern to parents and teachers is how far the Government will protect funding for schools. Despite the claims made today, is it not the case that the Government failed to keep their promise to increase spending by 0.1 per cent in real terms throughout the spending review period? Is it not also the case that simply maintaining a national schools budget at last year's cash level has meant a real-terms cut that many schools are grappling with?

We on this side will work constructively with all parties on the consultation to try to reach the best outcome for children and schools on the funding mechanism. At the same time, we want to see not only fair funding but also sufficient funding to ensure that every child gets the chance that they deserve.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her response. I welcome her offer to contribute to the consultation and to have constructive conversations about the way forward.

I will answer the questions that she asked. I am glad that she welcomed the announcement on capital that we made today. She called the decision taken by the Secretary of State last July to cancel the Building Schools for the Future programme “precipitous”. We had to stop it and act rapidly because of the economic situation that we had inherited. We could not carry on with the programme and, as a consequence of having taken that decision, we have been able to make savings on some of the programmes and projects that have gone ahead, which has contributed to the £500 million that we were able to announce today to help with basic need.

The details on private finance will need to be worked out. The Government believe that they can learn from previous schemes and find ways of doing it better. My noble friend Lord Sassoon announced today that the Treasury has identified £1.5 billion-worth of savings from running current PFI projects, but we will need to work out the details.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the condition survey needs to be carried out speedily. We want to start straightaway. She asked about basic need and free schools. This is a pot of money that will be allocated to local authorities on the basis of demographic need, where the need for new places, particularly primary places, is greatest.

I accept the noble Baroness's point about revenue. She said that some schools need more than others. The principle that we are striving for, which I am sure she shares, is that schools in similar circumstances, with similar conditions and similar pupils, should be funded on an equal basis. However, I accept her underlying premise that some schools will have different needs. I also agree with her that moving to a national funding formula may not be simple. The system is inherently complex. That is one reason why we will do this very cautiously—which the noble Baroness welcomed—rather than rush it; we will have a lot of consultation, make sure that there is proper transitional protection in place and not implement it before 2013-14 at the earliest. As the noble Baroness knows, one of the questions in the consultation is whether we should do this on an even longer timescale.

On the question of academies funding, I am absolutely clear that the principle to which we are working is parity of funding. We are having this consultation because of the views expressed to us by local authorities, and the concern that they expressed about the decisions that the Government reached at an earlier point about the basis on which funding would be taken from them, to stop the double-funding that had been going on.

The noble Baroness asked about special needs. It is very much our intention that everything we do should be compatible with the direction of travel set out in the Green Paper. Another proposal out for consultation is that we should have a special block of money for high-needs pupils to make sure that their needs are properly protected.

The subject of 16 to 19 funding is extremely important. We propose to look at that, too, and see whether we can simplify it, on the same lines as we are trying to simplify schools funding. We will run a review on that, which will start in the autumn.

On overall funding, I agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of maintaining funding in schools. In difficult circumstances, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State managed to protect funding for schools at flat cash levels with the pupil premium on top. In the circumstances, that was a good settlement for the Department for Education. On our announcement today about capital and about basic need, I am the first to concede that it is not the answer to everything, but it is a step in the right direction. I am glad that the noble Baroness welcomed our announcements on capital and revenue—with the caveats that she expressed —as a step in the right direction.

19:57

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, mentioned her concerns about funding for 16 to 19 year-olds. The Minister will be aware of my concerns about young people with ME who have been learning through the Nisai Virtual Academy. The funding continues through local authorities until they are 16, but it is now being cut off for 16 to 19 year-olds. At a vital stage when they are taking their exams, they find that they can no longer continue with their education.

I understand that Harrow College is funding existing students through their courses but will take on no new students. The Minister may agree that, as ME causes more long-term sickness absence in schools than any other illness, and about two-thirds of children on home tuition have ME, this is a very important group of children. Many of them are high achievers who are very frustrated because they cannot get on. Will the Minister give us hope that there will be funding? The virtual academy—it is virtual because it uses the internet—cannot tick the boxes for Ofsted and the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance because it has no bricks and mortar. Will the Minister help?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am very sensitive to the noble Baroness's point about children with ME, for a variety of reasons. I will look into the case that she mentions. Perhaps we can talk about it and take it forward.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I heartily welcome the fact that the Government are grasping the nettle of the complexity and unfairness of school funding, which the previous Government did not do in 13 years—indeed, they compounded the complexity problems.

First, I will say a word about capital funding. I notice from the Statement that the Secretary of State has accepted Mr Sebastian James’s recommendation to move towards greater standardisation of design of school buildings. Casting my mind back to the debate during the Localism Bill, I am sure the Government would not want a set of cloned schools all over the country. Can the Minister confirm that there will be a set of standard designs from which local communities can choose the most appropriate for their particular needs, not just one size fits all? That would not be in line with what this Government are trying to achieve. Will he also say whether energy efficiency, including microgeneration, will be included in those standard designs because, moving forward, that is going to be a very important issue?

On revenue, I welcome the consultation on moving towards a fairer national funding formula with appropriate room for local discretion—that is particularly important to those of us on these Benches—and the move towards a simpler, fairer and more transparent system. Schools need to know what to expect. From what the Minister said, I am sure he accepts that if you have a very simple system, it is likely not to be very fair, and if it is a very fair system, it is likely to have some complexity. I am sure that the Government’s consultation will allow for that. I also particularly welcome the Government’s determination to iron out the inequalities between areas and between academies and local authority schools.

On the subject of academies, I welcome the fact that the Government are publishing a consultation document for local authorities explaining the basis on which they intend that the money will be deducted this year and next. Does this mean that local authorities with no academies will have no deductions? Does it mean that there will be a standard costing for the services that academies will provide which local authorities will no longer provide? Finally, will he tell us a little more about how special schools will be treated?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Like my noble friend, I sat through the previous debate on design, and I thought someone would ask me about it. I was expecting the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, to be in her place, but my noble friend has asked the question instead. Coming to listen to another Bill going through its Committee stage and being subjected to some of the same kind of scrutiny to which I have been subjected in the Moses Room makes a nice change.

On design, the Government want to get a balance between delivering savings through a common sense approach and not reinventing the wheel every time. I agree about not having a one-size-fits-all design that can be rolled out across the country. There clearly needs to be proper discretion about the set of standardised designs—plural—that we would work up. In that context, building schools and other buildings that are energy efficient is extremely and increasingly important.

I agree with my noble friend about the importance of local discretion in thinking about revenue. She put the point about simplicity, equity and complexity very well. It is precisely those issues that we will need to tease out in the consultation to try to get to a point where there is more transparency and openness but there is still room for people to make sensible judgments on the ground. As she also said, we want to iron out some of these inequalities across the country. The points she raised about academies and academy funding are the sorts of issues that we will be discussing with local authorities and their representative bodies to try to resolve this issue.

Special schools, like all schools, will be able to apply for funding to help with their condition because we know from the work we have done that, just as with other schools, there are special schools in great need of help with dilapidation, so they will be able to apply to the same fund.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Statement. Can my noble friend help me with a couple of details on the capital side? First, possibly in parallel with, rather than in sequence with, the study that he is to undertake into the state of school conditions, will he be giving some thought to building up a matrix that will aid him in deciding which schools have the greatest need for capital work so there is a principled basis for doing it?

My second point is something of an extension of the point made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. It is in relation to the cost of building projects. Will he make sure that the costing takes into account the whole-of-life cost so that the building projects are sustainable, rather than simply the cheapest at the time?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, the point of carrying out the condition survey is precisely to arrive at the point, to which my noble friend referred, where one can make a fair comparison between schools across the country to work out which of them have the greatest need and are most in need of having their condition improved. He is obviously right about that.

So far as the cost of the building projects is concerned, my noble friend makes a good point. One of the things that we will be looking at is how to try to secure the best possible value in a number of different ways, perhaps by grouping schools.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is a very distinguished Member of this House, but I think Labour Back-Benchers are the only group who have not had a turn so far. We have a certain amount of time.

On design, did not the Victorians produce some extremely distinguished school buildings that have stood the test of time on the basis of just three or four rather standardised models? I hope the Minister will look at that example and perhaps be inspired by it.

On revenue funding, at first sight, one sees that it appears very just and sensible to cut back proportionately revenue funding to LEAs where a portion of that funding is earmarked for services that are now being paid for directly by funding academies. However, is it not the case that there are very considerable economies of scale in education, including in the operation of LEAs, and that the administrative and other fixed costs of those LEAs in providing those services will now, under this new system, fall on a reduced volume of funding for the LEA schools and therefore be a higher proportion of that funding? Therefore, schools that remain within the LEA system, will lose out, simply because there are academies in that area, and they will lose out more, the more academies there are in that area. Surely that is not fair either.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the noble Lord about Victorian schools. I am not an expert, but I think one of the reasons why, when one goes around London, they all look quite similar is because they were procured by a board. He is absolutely right about the question of how one goes about doing that. That demonstrates that it is possible to have something that looks recognisable but is also good quality and stands the test of time. My observation, as someone who gets sent around academies quite a lot, is that they all had fantastic architects and a lot of expense, and they all pride themselves on how original they are, but they all look quite similar if you look around the country. Going back to our earlier debate, I think the point about how design is accepted at a time is well made.

I understand the noble Lord’s point about economies of scale and academies. It is obviously the case, and it is indeed happening, that many academies are choosing to carry on buying services from the local authority if they think they are good quality local services and that they are delivering what they want. It is also the case that some local authorities are embracing, if that is the right word, a different role and are thinking that they want to be in the business of becoming commissioners and selling their services to a range of schools across broader areas. A number of different approaches are developing. I accept the underlying point he makes, but there is a varied response going on across the country.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I want to add to the design debate. First, I entirely agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said. Energy efficiency is also very important, but please let us have a design architectural competition to choose some of the best experts in that area. Secondly, the repairing of the older schools is terribly important because, again, pride in your school requires you and enables you to keep it in good order. The less well cared for a school is, the more likely it is to get kicked about and made even worse. Thirdly, and anticipating a debate we might have tomorrow but which sadly I can no longer take part in as I shall not be there, the involvement of the children themselves in the design of these schools and what is required there is crucially important. I have seen it in action with some young children advising student architects on what they should incorporate into a design. I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind when he is thinking of student governors.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will not be joining us tomorrow but I am looking forward to our debate on school governors. I agree with all her points. I agree that involving the children or the students in what is going on in a school is jolly important. Her point about the upkeep of it and people taking pride in it is also obviously right. Getting input from architects will also be extremely important when we are trying to come up with our standardised set of designs.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, was not entirely right to say that it was only the Labour Benches that had not yet contributed. We do not like to be overlooked too much, small though we are. I have another question for the Minister about new buildings, and about the procurement process. I speak as the chair of a new academy that has gone through the procurement process for new buildings. I have been struck by just how complex it is and how the costs of that must be built in to the end cost you have to pay when you get to the final preferred bidder. I agree that simplification in the design process should not go too far, but could that simplification also be applied to the procurement process?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The remarks made by the right reverend Prelate echo my almost daily plaint. I agree with him entirely. It is our hope that with the new scheme we will be able to deliver it faster, perhaps up to 12 months faster, which will obviously save money. I agree that these processes can seem extremely complex. If he has experience from the academy with which he is involved, I would be interested to talk about that because we are keen to learn and try to do it better.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, I want to highlight a couple of things in the Statement, but first I must say that I think it was quite a mean-spirited Statement in its very negative description of the approaches taken by the previous Government. Even in the paragraph on academies, there is no recognition of the success of the academies programme, which started under the previous Government and has carried on under this one. It is probably the most negative Statement that I have seen for quite some time in this House, and I just want to put on record the fact that I am very disappointed about that.

I have some questions about university technical colleges. Where do they fit into all this? What is their relationship to the academies? What is the funding for them? I am quite surprised that the Statement does not refer to them as the way forward. Noble Lords will know from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that they are very much the future, as I know from my involvement with some of the FE colleges that are going in that direction. Where are the university technical colleges going to fit in terms of revenue and the whole process?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I hope that noble Lords who have been subjected to me talking about academies would say that I have always been very quick to make clear the huge contribution that the previous Government made to academies. I have said from the beginning, although this might not always be an altogether welcome message for those on the Benches opposite, that I see my job as trying to build on what the previous Government did and what they intended to do in 2005. We are taking that forward; I am very clear about that. I am also very clear about Building Schools for the Future, having met a lot of the schools, children and heads who were involved with it. I absolutely share the previous Government’s intention to improve the building estate. I know what they were trying to do, and I understand why they did it, so I am sorry if the noble Baroness felt that the Statement was mean-spirited.

We did not mention funding for the UTCs in the Statement, but the noble Baroness will know that the Chancellor found some more money in the Budget to—I hope—double to 24 the number that we were aiming for in the lifetime of this Parliament. That is in place, and is not affected by anything that we have announced today. Given that these are new institutions, I guess that by definition the pot for dilapidation is not going to be relevant to them. As she will know from her conversations with FE colleges, there is a lot of support for them. We have had a large number of applications, which we are considering, and we will in due course make announcements on those which I will be very happy to share with her.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

May I press the Minister a little further? Where does the pupil premium fit into these proposals? As I understand it, there will be an allowance for deprivation and so forth on top of the basic amount, and I assume that that is where the pupil premium will come in. However, given that the local schools forum will still play a part in allocating resources at a local level, how can schools be guaranteed that they will actually get the money that they need from the pupil premium?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That is an extremely good question. Our approach to the pupil premium has consistently been to put it on top of other funding that is made available so that people can see very clearly where it sits and will over time be able to calculate its effect as we build it up. Our intention is that it will continue to be identified separately and go to schools, which over time will report on and account for the purposes to which it is spent.

20:18

Sitting suspended.

Localism Bill

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (9th Day) (Continued)

20:33

Amendment 152ZE

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

152ZE: Schedule 10, page 318, line 3, at end insert—
“( ) a statement of consultation undertaken on the proposals in the preparation of the order, including particulars of how paragraph 3A of this Schedule has been complied with, any responses to consultations received and the account taken of those responses.”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I shall speak also to Amendments 152BA and 152BB. These amendments propose that those undertaking a neighbourhood plan should have a duty to engage with people in the neighbourhood area at an early stage in the development of the plan. Of course, the plan has to be tested by a referendum in due course, but that is at the end of the process when the effort and expense have largely been incurred. Amendment 152ZE requires that proposals for neighbourhood development orders should be accompanied by a statement of consultation covering the responses received and how they have been taken into account. Amendment 152BA imposes a requirement to consult. This should be in the manner which the local authority considers to be consistent with good practice and, where relevant, the local authority’s statement of community involvement. These are straightforward amendments and I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I have an amendment in the group which has nothing to do with the Bill, and I apologise to my noble for inserting it. However, it relates to a long-running campaign for the age of voting to be lowered. When it comes to what is happening in their own community, children as young as 14 not only have a real understanding of that, but are also participating in what is going on and have an interest in the things a community might be doing to improve itself. We should look for ways of involving them.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 153ZAKA in this group. It is probing in nature and probably does not require an immediate answer. Your Lordships are unlikely to remember that at Second Reading I expressed a concern that bad neighbour developments might possibly end up in neighbourhoods or parishes where the opposition to such a bad neighbourhood development was likely to be the least vocal. I gather that this is a phenomenon which happens even today, and with a neighbourhood planning system is probably more likely to happen in the future. The reason a neighbourhood is not vocal may be that it is already a deprived area or it is one which for a variety of reasons lacks the capacity, the personalities, the knowledge or possibly just an understanding of this new system and the way things work. It may also lack the funding to commit itself to the preparation of a neighbourhood plan or organising a referendum and so on. Even without the threat of a bad neighbour development, it is likely that many parishes and neighbourhoods lack the time and capacity to organise a cohesive plan which, it is hoped, would promote development and progress. I do not believe that these sorts of communities will be able to compete within the new system.

I was struck by some briefing that I received from the Highgate Society, which, albeit in a completely different context, said—I paraphrase—that people have jobs, children and lives to manage and do not want to take responsibility for what they pay their taxes to government, particularly local government, to do. This applies particularly to deprived neighbourhoods or to people within rural parishes who do not necessarily have the ability to counteract either an articulate middle class who might share their parish or someone with a bee in their bonnet who does necessarily consider the effects of their grievance on the whole community. Perhaps I may paraphrase, or plagiarise, a Chinese proverb—I am not quite sure that it is a Chinese proverb, but, if it is not, it should be: a man with a job or income that pays for more than his basic needs has many choices as to how he spends his time, but a man who struggles to earn his basic needs has only one choice. Very often in rural communities, the poorest people do not get involved because they focus on other needs.

Although the whole localism agenda is a very worthy cause, many people will need a lot of help to play their part. It is vital that the Government devote considerable thought and resources to working out how they help all communities to do that. It is the very communities who are least likely to play their part and pick up the baton who are probably in most need of the localism agenda. I hope that the Government will be prepared to spend a lot of time and resources on developing capacity in those neighbourhoods. It would be good if they could respond positively and state exactly how they are going to set about this.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, before the Minister responds, perhaps I may comment on the amendments which have just been moved. I thoroughly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. Issues around capacity are vital, not only to the planning aspects of the Bill but to the whole issue of localism and whether people can make a reality of it. The impact assessment sets out the range of figures that might be involved in developing neighbourhood plans and holding referenda. Those are not small figures—I have forgotten what the range is, but it is not insignificant.

If there is not proper capacity building, proper training and proper funding, then, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, the people who will be able to take advantage of these arrangements will be the better off. They will inevitably—from their point of view not unreasonably—use them for their benefit and not necessarily for the benefit of the community as a whole. We should guard against that.

As regards the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, he wishes for people to be involved in the referendum from the age of 14. I do not disagree with that but, as the schedule is constructed, to be able to vote in a referendum you need to be able to vote for your councillor in the first place. You therefore need to be 18 years of age and so he might need a slightly different amendment. However, the concept of involving young people in their neighbourhood is absolutely right and I support it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, I can be reasonably helpful over all of these amendments. On the first amendment, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, is concerned about putting a requirement for consultation in the Bill. That is not necessary. We do not believe that it ought to be in primary legislation, anyway. The right place for consultation is in secondary legislation and the Government have appropriate powers to do this. I say that the amendment is inappropriate not because the provisions are there already but because consultation is about to take place in this area. We shall congregate in the summer and I hope that by the time we meet again we will have some views on the issue. I hope that will satisfy the noble Lord.

On Amendment 153A, our approach has already been to encourage consultation and participation as early as possible. Proposals can only proceed to examination if they have been the subject of consultation with the wider community and it has to be made clear that that has been done. However, as I say, there will be more consultation on consultation over the summer.

As to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the Government have already undertaken to implement a package of measures to ensure that neighbourhood planning is successful and to strengthen people’s ability and understanding of how to do it. In order to help with this, we have already given more than £3 million to four organisations which are tasked with providing the training, back-up and experience for neighbourhood forums to access so that they receive the support they need. We are also considering whether to provide direct financial assistance to neighbourhood forums for very much the same purpose. The intention is there and it is well understood.

As regards the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, it is a requirement that those who take part in a referendum have to be entitled to vote in a council election on the day of the referendum. As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, someone aged 14 is not entitled to vote in a council election and, therefore, they would not be entitled to vote in the referendum. We believe that it should be only people who are eligible to vote in council elections. These are the people who elect local councillors—and the local councils then go on ultimately to make the final planning decisions —and we believe that it is right that only those aged 18 and above should be involved in these referendums.

With those explanations, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

20:44

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response. We look forward to the consultation on the consultation when we return after the Recess, which we hope will deal fully with the point. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 152ZE withdrawn.

Amendments 152A to 152AB not moved.

Amendment 152B

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

152B: Schedule 10, page 318, line 26, at end insert—
“(2) If—
(a) a proposal by a qualifying body is made by an organisation or body designated as a neighbourhood forum, and (b) the designation is withdrawn at any time before the proposal is submitted for independent examination under paragraph 7,the proposal is to be treated as withdrawn by the qualifying body at that time.(3) If the withdrawal of the designation occurs after the proposal is submitted for independent examination under that paragraph, the withdrawal is not to affect the validity of the proposal.”

Amendment 152B agreed.

Amendments 152ZBA to 153A not moved.

Amendments 153AA to 153AE

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

153AA: Schedule 10, page 324, line 27, after “14” insert “, and (if applicable) an additional referendum in accordance with paragraph 14A,”

153AB: Schedule 10, page 324, line 30, after “referendum” insert “(or referendums)”

153AC: Schedule 10, page 325, line 1, after “referendum” insert “(or referendums)”

153AD: Schedule 10, page 325, line 5, after “referendum” insert “(or referendums)”

153AE: Schedule 10, page 325, line 8, at end insert “(or referendums)”

Amendments 153AA to 153AE agreed.

Amendment 153AEA not moved.

Amendments 153AF to 153AH

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

153AF: Schedule 10, page 326, line 29, at end insert—
“14A (1) The additional referendum mentioned in paragraph 12(4) must be held on the making of a neighbourhood development order if the draft order relates to a neighbourhood area that has been designated as a business area under section 61GA.
(2) Sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph 14 is to apply in relation to the additional referendum as it applies in relation to a referendum under that paragraph.
(3) A person is entitled to vote in the additional referendum if on the prescribed date—
(a) the person is a non-domestic ratepayer in the referendum area, or(b) the person meets such other conditions as may be prescribed.(4) “Non-domestic ratepayer” has the same meaning as in Part 4 of the Local Government Act 2003 (see section 59(1)).
(5) Regulations may make provision for excluding a person’s entitlement to vote in the additional referendum.”

153AG: Schedule 10, page 326, line 31, at end insert “or 14A”

153AH: Schedule 10, page 327, line 10, after “14” insert “or 14A”

Amendments 153AF to 153AH agreed.

Schedule 10, as amended, agreed.

Schedule 11 : Neighbourhood planning: community right to build orders

Amendment 153AHA not moved.

Amendments 153AJ and 153AK

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

153AJ: Schedule 11, page 331, line 8, after “by” insert “sub-paragraphs (2) to (5) of”

153AK: Schedule 11, page 331, line 29, at end insert—
“(5A) In consequence of the provision made by sub-paragraphs (2) to (5) of this paragraph—
(a) paragraph 12(7) to (9) of Schedule 4B have effect as if the words “(or referendums)” were omitted, and(b) that Schedule has effect as if paragraph 14A (and references to that paragraph) were omitted.”

Amendments 153AJ and 153AK agreed.

Schedule 11, as amended, agreed.

Clause 102 : Charges for meeting costs relating to neighbourhood planning

Amendment 153ZZAKA

Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

153ZZAKA: Clause 102, Page 80, line 40, leave out “may” and insert “must”

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the other amendments in the group. These amendments are about charges for neighbourhood development orders and would amend Clauses 102 to 105, which are about charges for meeting costs related to neighbourhood planning and financial assistance in relation to neighbourhood planning.

The Bill states:

“The Secretary of State may with the consent of the Treasury make regulations providing for the imposition of charges for the purpose of meeting expenses incurred … by local planning authorities”,

relating to neighbourhood planning functions. As regards the phrase:

“The Secretary of State may … make regulations”,

we say that this should be “must”. Without being able to levy charges, local planning authorities risk being seriously out of pocket. Will the Minister confirm that the expenses which will be reimbursable through these charges include the cost of organising a referendum?

An important question is when the charges have to be paid. The Bill says that it will be,

“when the development is commenced”.

But that means that all the costs of the local planning authority, including the cost of a referendum and examination, may never be recouped if the development does not take place. We are proposing amendments that suggest that the charge should be paid when the draft neighbourhood development order is submitted to the local planning authority by the parish council or the neighbourhood forum, as with an ordinary planning application. Why should this be different and why should the local planning authority, the council, have to carry this cost, perhaps for ever?

An alternative amendment suggests that the cost should be levied when the local planning authority resolves to hold a referendum—in other words, the costs begin when it is really serious and after the decision has been made whether it should go ahead to a referendum. Again, the risk is that the local planning authority is seriously out of pocket due to things that are completely out of its control. This could make a very serious hole in its budget, especially if it is quite a small district council.

The second issue in this group relates to financial assistance by the Secretary of State in relation to neighbourhood planning. The amendments suggest that the first need is to publicise the changes in the planning system. What will the Government be doing to tell people about the changes in this Bill, if and when it becomes law?

The main amendment is to probe who the Government intend should receive this money and how much is involved. The Minister has mentioned that some money has already been paid out to organisations to provide support and training. Forty pilots have been announced and have been funded to the tune of a relatively small amount of money. The Minister can no doubt tell us what that sum is. Why, therefore, is this provision needed, if money can already be provided to pilots? Why do we have to have a separate provision in this Bill allowing this money to be spent? What extra things will it be spent on that it could not be spent on at the moment?

The Bill provides for,

“the provision of financial assistance … to any body or other person”—

which may involve,

“the making of agreements or other arrangements with any body or other person”.

Who does this refer to? Does it include parish councils and local planning authorities, or is it restricted only to neighbourhood forums? Clearly, we are back to the difference between a parished area, with a parish council, and an unparished area with a neighbourhood forum. What kind of bodies are likely to get this money and what are they expected to do with it? What are the processes for handing out this money? How is it going to be decided who to give it to? If neighbourhood planning takes off in a big way, one assumes that the amount of money that the Government have available will not be sufficient to seriously subsidise everybody. Therefore, they will have to choose one way or the other. I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has raised a series of what seem to be quite pertinent questions and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I will just comment on two of the amendments. In Amendment 153ZZAKA, the noble Lord suggests that there has to be a “must” in respect of making regulations—although I see the force of the argument that most, or all, local authorities would be daft not to, we are dealing with localism and I do not see why the discretion should not be with the local authorities. I may have missed it, but I think that Amendment153ZZAKF deletes a right to enforce in the case of death or insolvency. I think that is the thrust of the amendment, but I was not quite sure what it was about. Perhaps I misunderstood but it would be helpful if the noble Lord could clarify that.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, without actually going back to it and looking it up, I do not think so. If that is what it says, it was a mistake. Perhaps it is the wrong line.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I can probably enlighten the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on what his amendment was about when we get to it. Amendments 153ZZAKA to 153ZZAKF all relate to the provisions on charges that we started discussing in the last group. Amendment 153ZZAKA would make it a requirement for the Government to introduce regulations imposing such charges. It is our intention to introduce charges that would be payable by developers on development that has been given permission by a neighbourhood development order. However, that is not to say that, in future, a decision could not be made to meet some of the costs of neighbourhood planning in a different way. We do not, therefore, wish to tie our hands by making it a requirement to regulate in this way. Having said that, before the next stage I would like to test out the business of when the charges are paid so that I can have a sensible answer about it. It is very late for a charge to be made at a time when permission has been given and just before development.

Amendment 153ZZAKB would specify that the costs that can be covered by such charges include the cost of holding a referendum. That is already implicit in the current provisions, and specifying a single cost like this could be taken to imply that other costs have been excluded. They have not, and that would be included.

Amendments 153ZZAKC and 153AKD both relate to the point at which any charge should be made. I am sorry—I leapt in on the previous amendment with what I should have said on this one. Our view is that developers should pay a charge when development commences. We just need to get a little more advice on that, and as to why it is there. It would be more helpful if the fee and charge were made earlier. I will come back to that.

Amendment 153ZZAKE says that, when charges are imposed in relation to a local development order, the charge must be made before the authority takes any further action in relation to that order. The provisions do not extend to local development orders. In the case of neighbourhood development orders, if full permission has been given for development, there may be no further action for a local planning authority to take. So this provision would have no teeth.

Amendment 153ZZAKF would restrict the ability of the Secretary of State to make regulations about the collection and enforcement of charges on a neighbourhood development order. This was the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, could not quite remember. The consequence would be that charges would still apply in relation to neighbourhood development orders, but the collection and enforcement of those charges would be constrained. These powers are designed to ensure that the regulations can deal flexibly and efficiently with changes in circumstances or with problems which become apparent in the future.

There were five amendments on financial assistance. Amendments 153ZZAKG, 153ZZAKH and 153ZZAKJ relate to the provisions on financial assistance for neighbourhood planning. Amendments 153ZZAKG, 153ZZAKH seek to prevent the provision of financial assistance for promoting the benefits of neighbourhood planning, and Amendment 153ZZAKJ seeks to prevent assistance being given to other bodies or individuals. We believe that, in addition to central government funding to local planning authorities for their neighbourhood planning functions, communities that wish to engage in shaping their future should receive support. This could be achieved through funding an independent advice service, through direct funding of neighbourhood groups or through a mixture of both approaches. We would not want to rule those out. The amendments would limit our flexibility.

I recognise the concerns behind Amendments 153ZZAKG and 153ZZAKH. It is certainly not our intention to finance reams of propaganda in support of neighbourhood planning. But we do want to ensure that communities, especially those communities with little prior knowledge of the planning system, can understand what neighbourhood planning can do for them. This is what this provision is aimed at. Similarly, Clause 105(2) would allow us to enter into contracts with training providers or to give grants to voluntary sector organisations to work with communities to help them realise their goals. That reinforces what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, under previous amendments. It is important that when these neighbourhood forums are set up they have the support they need to enable them to do the job that has been put before them. I hope that that answers the noble Lord’s questions and that he can withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply but it does not really take us much further than we can deduce simply by reading the Bill. Concerning financial assistance, I am trying to find out how it is going to work, how much money there will be, who will be responsible for handing out the dosh, how people apply for it and who then makes a decision between the different people applying. Perhaps the Minister does not have any of that information, but that is what I was really trying to probe. Does she agree that somebody can write down what the Government’s thinking is, as far as it goes, together with who has had the money so far and on what basis they have been chosen? Would it be possible to write about that?

21:00

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I will certainly write. Regarding the four organisations that have already received the money, I think there was a full tendering exercise but I will certainly ensure that the noble Lord has the details he asked for. I regret that, both when listening to him and reading his amendments, I was not aware of quite the details that he was looking for but with him having made them clear now, I will make sure that he has answers to them.

[Lord Greaves]

That is fair enough. When you put down amendments to delete pieces of Bills to probe things, it is sometimes difficult to get through exactly what you are trying to get at. Concerning the charges, the amendments that I put down should be seen as a whole. Individually, they make no sense at all but, taken as a whole, I am trying to suggest that the point at which the charge is being levied is too late at the moment—the Minister had some sympathy with that and is going to look at it—and that it should be paid upfront. People should go in and hand their money over the counter, or however they pay, rather than being sent a bill and then having all this chasing and enforcement procedure. In the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, did not understand, I was just taking out all the chasing-up-the-money procedures. If you take a planning application in and do not hand your money over, your application is not dealt with; it is as simple as that. It seems to me that the same thing should apply for this.

However, the Minister said that she would look at this other point and I look forward to learning the results of her researches. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 153ZZAKA withdrawn.

Amendments 153ZZAKB to 153ZZAKE not moved.

Clause 102 agreed.

Clause 103 : Regulations under section 102: collection and enforcement

Amendment 153ZZAKF not moved.

Clause 103 agreed.

Clause 104 agreed.

Clause 105 : Financial assistance in relation to neighbourhood planning

Amendments 153ZZAKG to 153ZAKA not moved.

Clause 105 agreed.

Amendment 153AKA not moved.

Clause 106 agreed.

Amendments 153AKB and 153AKC not moved.

Schedule 12 : Neighbourhood planning: consequential amendments

Amendment 153AKD not moved.

Amendment 153AL

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

153AL: Schedule 12, page 336, line 19, leave out “section 61F or 61G” and insert “any of sections 61F to 61GA”

Amendment 153AL agreed.

Schedule 12, as amended, agreed.

Clause 107 : Consultation before applying for planning permission

Amendment 153AM

Moved by

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

153AM: Clause 107, page 84, leave out lines 33 to 35 and insert—
“Consultation: code of best practice61W Code of best practice for consultation
(1) The Secretary of State must publish and keep under review a code of practice relating to the carrying out of consultation in cases where—”

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I shall discuss with this amendment the three others in the group. I can deal with Amendments 153AM and 153AN very briefly. What is proposed here is that instead of having all these requirements laid out in statutes, where they become rigid and less amended, they should form part of a code of practice. That should have exactly the same effect but can be tailored to suit the changing circumstances of the time.

Amendment 153AM is the paving amendment, as it were, but Amendment 153AN would take out almost a page of the statute. It seems to me that is a sensible way of trying to deal with the requirements on pre-consultation. If one is dealing with the major infrastructure units which will go the IPC or to MIPU, then of course there has to be a very substantial programme of pre-consultation. I welcome the Government’s proposal to extend the same sort of provision to the ordinary planning application.

The last amendment in the group in my name is Amendment 153C. This raises an interesting point which was put to me by the United Kingdom Business Council for Sustainable Energy. That body is puzzled as to why the Government have decided that the relevant measure must be statutory. The Government have stated in the past that it is for the developer to decide what level of consultation is proportionate and appropriate. However, Clause 107 amends Section 61 of the Town and Country Planning Act by adding a range of provisions, including new Section 61Y, headed “Power to make supplementary provision”—my amendment proposes to take that out—which allows for local authorities to make a development order to set out publicity and consultation requirements which the developer will be required to follow. There is clearly a contradiction between these two requirements: the Government having stated that it is for the developer to decide the level of consultation, and the Bill stating that the development order will set out requirements in that regard. Therefore, Amendment 153C is a probing amendment to explore the divergence between what appeared to be the Government’s stated objective of allowing developers to decide what is proportionate and this new facility for local authorities to define what must be done through the new Section 61Y powers. I look forward to my noble friend’s reply. I beg to move.

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 153B, which is grouped with the amendments of my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, although it is on a rather different theme. I believe that this amendment has the support of most of those concerned with the cultural heritage of this country, and certainly of those concerned with the understanding of the prehistoric and early historic past of our land. It is needed to ensure that the Bill ensures that heritage issues are not ignored in the course of development.

Members of your Lordships' House will recall that the Heritage Protection Bill, which was supposed to be given consideration in the previous Parliament, had the intention of placing the maintenance of the historic environment record as a statutory duty upon local planning authorities. That did not happen, nor is it proposed here, but it is imperative that all developments have some regard to the historic environment and take steps not to damage it, or at least to do so only after careful consideration and with any necessary actions by way of mitigation.

These obligations do not appear on the face of the Bill and it seems very desirable that they should do so. It seems that as part of the new neighbourhood development plan process there will be no opportunity to carry out pre-application assessment in the same way as for other development under the normal planning application process. This is all the more serious since most archaeological sites are undesignated; that is, they are not scheduled monuments or otherwise protected. This point was discussed earlier in relation to Amendment 145B. This leaves a glaring loophole in the Bill.

My amendment is drawn up in such a form as to place on the developer the obligation to seek the advice of the local planning authority about the historic environment. That implies that the local authority must have access to the relevant historic environment record. This amendment deliberately sets no obligation upon each local planning authority to maintain such a record. Ideally, each will have its own record, but there may be cases where two or three local planning authorities can share a single historic environment record. We are not setting out to be prescriptive in that respect, but it is implied in the amendment that the authority shall at least have access to such a record. Is it conceivable that development should go ahead without the local authority giving consideration to the historic environment on the basis of good and up-to-date information?

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 153AM and to express some sympathy with it. I very much welcome the principle of pre-application consultation in a range of applications, particularly for major projects and so on. It has been working in Scotland and there are some benefits to that because there is the ability then to take into account at an early stage the product of that consultation and to feed it back in.

My worry is the one expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about the rigidity that can creep into the statutory provisions that can sometimes provide a hurdle for developers to get over—and, frankly, they cannot do without lawyers’ advice. While I am more than happy for lawyers to be employed on this, there are limits.

I ask the Government to see whether or not we can get a system that puts the principles into the statute but leaves a lot of the way in which it is done to guidance, and we should not thereby get into a situation where applications fail because one person who might have been expected to be consulted has not been—or something of that nature. That is not to detract in any way from the principle that there must be adequate consultation and, within it, an obligation on the individual developer or applicant to respond positively to the consultation exercise. Let us not get into a rigidity.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we support the thrust of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, about local planning authorities having access to the relevant historic environment records. That must be right, and it follows on from our earlier discussion. I do not know how practical or easy it would be to put in place, but it is something we should require and strive towards.

As to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, he posed a conundrum about the operation of proposed new Section 61Y, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I thought that I was sure of my ground on the first amendments relating to retaining in statute the issues about requiring pre-application consultation. It is therefore with some hesitation that I disagree with my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd. I can understand the need for a degree of flexibility, but I do not see within the amendment something that is unduly rigid, although I am prepared to be swayed on that issue. However, I would need some persuading that we should adjust the Bill in that respect, but the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has raised an interesting point on new Section 61Y and the possible conflicts therein. I wait to see how that is to be resolved. I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have spoken to this series of amendments. Clause 107 sets out a light-touch set of requirements for prospective applicants for planning permission to publicise their development proposals so that members of the community have an opportunity to comment or collaborate on the design at an early stage. Instead, the amendments would require a prospective applicant to have regard to a code of best practice for consultation set out at the national level by the Secretary of State. It is not necessary or appropriate to set out detailed national standards. There should be flexibility for each consultation to be tailored to the unique circumstances and characteristics of the development proposed and the host area.

21:15

Furthermore, we do not consider ourselves as the Government to be the leading expert in consultation techniques. This is a fast evolving, creative area of practice which we do not want to stifle. Our intention is to be light-touch. Setting out standards in that way would also introduce an additional and potentially unpopular test of compliance for developers. The Government have made very clear that we want to reduce the amount of policy and guidance on the planning application process. Even if it was introduced with the best of intentions, a code of practice on pre-application consultation would only add to the list. Similarly, we do not want to start expanding the overall purpose of pre-application discussions. We see that is something that takes place between developers and local communities, with local authority involvement optional.

Amendment 153B would compel developers through statute to consider heritage matters at pre-application stage. That would duplicate existing national planning policy and go far beyond the original intention of the provision. Should the need to set up further procedural requirements arise in future, new Section 61Y sets out a power to make supplementary regulations about consultation procedures. The Government would consider carefully the impact of introducing any additional prescription to the policy through those regulation-making powers.

Clause 107(2) is necessary to ensure that developers submit evidence to the local planning authority of what consultation they have undertaken and the account taken of those responses. In line with the Government's commitment to sunsetting new legislation, Clause 107(3) and (4) ensures that the new duty is reviewed in future, by providing that it will cease to have effect after seven years unless it is extended by order.

I trust that, with those reassurances, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

Before the noble Lord does so—this is a slightly cheeky intervention—my noble friend said that the Government did not believe in telling people in great detail how to carry out consultation because they were not experts on it and because it is a fast- moving area. Why do they, therefore, in so many parts of the Bill take a very different view when it comes to consultation by local authorities?

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I have to say that during discussion on the Bill, noble Lords are constantly saying that the Government are being too prescriptive, on the one hand; or, on the other hand, that the Government need regulations or some backstop somewhere. It seems to me that there is balance in all things. What I have read out is the balance perceived at this point. This is Committee, so, as always, the comments of noble Lords will be taken into account.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I am grateful for that last comment and most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, for his support for my amendment. It is extraordinary how differently those of us on the Back Benches and my noble friends on the Front Benches can view the same proposal. In my innocence, I thought that a code of practice was rather simpler than a substantial statutory provision. Obviously, my noble friend Lord Shutt does not think so. We will look to see whether it is necessary to come back to this; I will certainly take advice. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 153AM withdrawn.

Amendments 153AN to 153C not moved.

Clause 107 agreed.

Amendment 153D

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

153D: Before Clause 108, insert the following new Clause—
“Notice requiring application for planning permission for development already carried out
After section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 insert—
“70A Notice requiring application for planning permission for development already carried out
Where, in view of the planning authority, there is a breach of planning permission or the local authority’s planning policy, the planning authority may issue a notice—
(a) requiring the owner of the land in, on, over or under which the development has been carried out to make an application to them for planning permission for the development;(b) describing the development in a way that is sufficient to identify it; and(c) specifying a date by which the application is to be made.””

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, Amendment 153D concerns retrospective planning permissions. It says that, where there is a breach of planning control, the planning authority must issue a notice,

“requiring the owner of the land in, on, over or under which the development has been carried out to make an application to them for planning permission for the development … describing the development in a way that is sufficient to identify it; and … specifying a date by which the application is to be made”.

While the purpose of the clause is, at face value, good, it is suggested that it will not significantly shorten the timescale for inappropriate unauthorised development to be removed. Although the clause seeks to prevent developers running a ground (a) appeal and a retrospective planning application at the same time, it should be borne in mind that, in the event that a retrospective application is submitted closely followed by an enforcement notice, a right of appeal against the refusal of planning permission will still exist. If the intention is to retain this right of appeal, then any appeal, including the appellant’s statement, should be submitted within 28 days of the date of refusal. The appeal should then be automatically converted to a ground (a) enforcement appeal so that in essence only one appeal is running.

However, Clause 108 still fails to deal with developers who carry out unauthorised development and who refuse to submit a retrospective planning application to regularise such development. Where the development is inappropriate, it can be dealt with by a notice. However, where it would not be expedient to take formal action, there is no sanction. This causes problems, especially where neighbours have done the right thing and applied for permission while they see a developer cocking a snook at the system and getting away with it.

The planning system should be an open and transparent method of regulating development. Many of the people who decide to circumvent the system avoid the public consultation process, and that must be contrary to the aims of localism. In addition, it puts an onus on the local authority to investigate and evaluate the proposal at the authority’s expense when the developer is making a gain. As one planning enforcement officer affirmed, it is important that the public have confidence that the system does not allow rogue developers to continue to take advantage. We suggest that any developer who has carried out unauthorised development should be compelled to submit a retrospective planning application, with a suitable sanction by way of a fixed penalty notice for double the appropriate fee if they fail to do so, and this amendment should be incorporated into the Localism Bill.

I am advised by the RTPI that the amendment is based on Section 33A of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, as amended by the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006. I beg to move.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 154, which is grouped with Amendment 153D.

Clause 108 inserts a new Section 70C into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and gives the local planning authority the power to decline to determine a planning application if the grant of permission would involve granting, whether in relation to the whole or any part of the land to which an enforcement notice relates, permission in respect of the whole or any part of the matters specified in the enforcement notice as constituting a breach of planning control.

We had a brief discussion, interrupted by a Division, with the Minister and her advisers on new Section 70C a couple of weeks ago, and I hope that in the light of that discussion, the Minister will have had second thoughts about the consequences that it might have.

I should like to make two preliminary observations. The vast majority of retrospective planning applications are not made by Gypsies and Travellers, but power conferred on local authorities by Clause 108 is discretionary. In the discussion that we had, it was clear that we all envisage that it will be used predominantly to put a stop to appeals by members of those communities against refusal of their planning applications for unauthorised developments.

The Secretary of State said on 29 August last year, referring to the CLG's announcement of that date, that he was looking at ways to strengthen the powers available to councils to more effectively tackle unauthorised development and that these developments have caused tensions between Travellers and the settled population. The announcement was not about unauthorised development in general. Yet I think it was also agreed at our meeting a couple of weeks ago that it would have been unlawful for the Government to have designed this clause with Gypsies and Travellers as a target, as Mr Pickles made clear they did. I would be grateful for the Minister's comments on this difficulty that I have with the clause.

The proposal in new Section 70C of the TCPA 1990, to which this amendment relates, when taken together with the amendment to Section 174 of the Act relating to appeals against enforcement notices, goes far beyond the stated intention of preventing delays caused by the running of concurrent or consecutive appeals. If these provisions become law, a local planning authority would be able to use the new power in Section 174(2)(a) to issue an enforcement notice within the period specified in Section 78(2), which I understand is eight weeks, after receiving a planning application for retrospective permission for a Gypsy site, and then use the power in new Section 70C to refuse to determine the application. The applicant would then be estopped from appealing against the enforcement notice, given the wording of Section 174(2)(a), and would have no ability to argue that the planning merits justified the grant of planning permission for the development. Instead of there being no second appeal on the merits, there would be no appeal at all. The applicant could go for judicial review of the decision not to determine the application, but the local planning authority would almost certainly defeat any such challenge by relying on the legislation.

It may be that local planning authorities will decide not to use their powers or will fail to do so within eight weeks, but experience suggests that enforcement powers will be used enthusiastically by local planning authorities in Gypsy and Traveller cases. It is possible that where no enforcement action has been taken before a site is developed, Travellers could decide not to make a retrospective planning application but instead simply wait until an enforcement notice is issued and then appeal against the notice. The amendments to the 1990 Act in this clause will not debar a ground (a) appeal in such circumstances. However, local planning authorities often do not bother to issue enforcement notices; instead, they simply apply for an injunction under Section 187B of the 1990 Act against unauthorised developments.

In most cases, the target family's best way of defending such a claim has been to show that they have sought planning permission and that their application has a realistic chance of success, but given the provisions of Clause 108, such a course may not be open to them. The only recourse would be to argue that the authority should serve an enforcement notice before seeking an injunction, giving them the opportunity to appeal and have their case determined on the merits. However, the chances are that such an argument would be unsuccessful and if the court accepted it, the ensuing delay would be contrary to the Government's aim of stopping retrospective applications whatever their planning merits.

So, this amendment provides that the enforcement notice must not only have been issued but also have taken effect. Clause 108 could not then be used by planning authorities to issue an enforcement notice after an application for planning permission has been made, thus preventing any appeal on the merits of the development being heard. Secondly, it would prevent appeals only for three years after an enforcement notice took effect, so that land would not be permanently sterilised, and changed circumstances would be arguable at a planning appeal brought more than three years after the enforcement notice was issued. We had a brief discussion in the meeting two weeks ago about this time limit and I would not be absolutely committed to it if the amendment is otherwise acceptable to the Government.

The reason why Gypsies and Travellers have resorted to lodging retrospective planning applications is that there is no land in the whole of the country designated for their use by local planning authorities. This is in stark contrast to the Government's intention, in the national planning policy framework to be published later this month, for a housing bonanza for developers in the green belt, according to Ben Webster, the environment editor of the Times, who has seen a leaked copy of the document. With 20 per cent of those who live in caravans being statutorily homeless, they have had no option but to buy a piece of land that they can develop as a site and then apply for planning permission. The consensus among academics and lawyers who know about these matters is that something like 75 per cent of successful appeals are for retrospective applications. Taking the statistics from the work of Dr Jo Richardson, that would equate to around 100 a year.

21:30

Just as that number of families has been enabled to settle down and develop a more sustainable way of life—perhaps many more, when one considers that most appeals are for more than one family—so, when this legislation comes into force, 100 or more families a year are likely to be dumped on the roadside, adding to the 1,000 families on unauthorised developments counted by local authorities at the beginning of the year. At the same time, there are 2,200 caravans on unauthorised developments, some of which may not yet have been subject to planning applications and may thus be caught by Clause 108.

The land that these Gypsies and Travellers occupy in desperation is not always ideal from a planning point of view: but the blame rests squarely on successive Governments, not on the victims of the laissez-faire policies over the five successive decades since I first became involved in Gypsy and Traveller issues. Having a fixed abode is better than being hunted all over the country by planning officers and bailiffs. It means that the gross disadvantage in terms of health, education, access to other public services and social exclusion of the Gypsy and Traveller people can be dealt with more effectively in time. This clause makes the task a great deal harder. I beg the Committee to alleviate its effect by agreeing to the amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, in supporting Amendment 154, I have very little to add to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who covered the main ground. I emphasise that at the moment the legislative proposal does not apply only to Gypsies and Travellers; the double whammy covers everybody who is caught in that situation. I am most grateful to the Minister for the meeting we had earlier, at which I think it was registered that there is a certain amount of confusion between the intended and unintended effects. If the legislation is not amended, not only will there be more confusion, but there is likely to be more contentious litigation and the prospect of a challenge to the legislation's compatibility with human rights.

As the Minister will know, previously the UK Government defended the reliance of the planning system on the right to be heard by an impartial planning inspector. This legislation does not match up to any of that. I look forward to the Minister's response.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, my Amendment 155 is in this group. After listening to the complexity of the last amendment, I must say that mine is extremely simple. However, it is not quite what I intended to table. It is headed, “Requirement for consultation on retrospective application”, which is exactly what I believe should happen. However, it says that the local planning authority may require an applicant to do this. My view is that the council planning authority should do this.

I have had personal experience in two parts of the country. In my village, local people supported an application to convert a barn opposite into a home and to build a wall two metres high. Suddenly, we found that we were faced with a wall at least two to three metres higher than originally proposed. When we said that we were not consulted, we were told that the builders of the wall had been given retrospective permission. However, it was given without any of the people who had taken an interest in the application, and in many cases supported it, having any idea that the thing had gone back for retrospective permission. I believe that anyone who sent in comments on the original application should certainly be consulted again, but I do not think I intended it to be the applicant doing it. I intended it to be part of the planning procedure. It is a very simple amendment. It cut out the lovely view we all had of the village green, the only unspoilt part, where there are sheep and so forth wandering around. Instead, we have got a wall three metres extra in height. I think this sort of thing is happening to people everywhere, and it should be covered.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I have the fourth amendment —Amendment 170CH—in the group, which is a bit of a mixed bag. I also added my name to the first amendment which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and support everything he said about it.

Amendment 170CH is another amendment which originated with the RTPI. I am also grateful for help with it from Vivien Green, who is a planning consultant who lives not very far away from me in Pendle. The amendment would add two new sections to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The first would be new Section 106D, “Notification of initiation of development”, the key part of which reads:

“A person who intends to carry out development for which permission has been granted or for which a local development order, a neighbourhood development order or a community right to build order has been made must as soon as practicable after deciding on a date on which to initiate the development inform the local planning authority of that date”.

It also requires the local planning authority to draw attention to this provision when it gives permission for development.

The second new section, Section 106E, “Display of notice during development”, states that,

“A person carrying out relevant development must display a notice containing prescribed information while the development is taking place”,

and gives some more details about the classes of development to which this applies—it obviously would not apply to small developments or simple changes of use—and to some other provisions in relation to it.

There is no doubt that there is a general problem with enforcement. In general, enforcement is something that local planning authorities do not always do as well as they do some of their other tasks. It is seen as something that you do when you have a bit of spare time, perhaps, and it does not get the same resources put into it. That includes enforcement of conditions and of compliance with the details of planning applications. It is our view that a provision that developers and people with planning permission should have to inform the local planning authority when development starts would be of help in this respect.

Such a provision would ensure that checks can then be made on pre-commencement conditions and subsequently that development is proceeding in accordance with approved plans. It is already a mandatory requirement for developers to give 48 hours’ notice of intention to commence work under the building regulations. Of course, developers may use someone other than the council to provide building control, but, nevertheless, many still use the council. Even if a developer is going to use a council building inspector, in a number cases the development can commence by the actions of the developer long before a building control notice is required.

I have been provided with correspondence between the Member of Parliament for Pendle, Andrew Stephenson MP, who was originally contacted by Vivien Green to take this matter up, and Bob Neill, the Minister, whose letter puts the argument about why the Government are not happy about this, which is perhaps what the Minister is going to say. The letter says:

“However, I would be reluctant to impose a further statutory requirement of this nature on developers, in addition to those that apply under Building Regulations and the Community Infrastructure Levy system, particularly when we cannot know whether local planning authorities would be likely to use the information routinely or only exceptionally. If a developer is suspected of having failed to comply with any pre-commencement condition, the local planning authority’s enforcement team is still able to take action”.

However, I think the argument that it is onerous should not be taken too seriously. Filling in a simple form, possibly a prepaid one, to notify the council of the intention to start development is not a great burden and is definitely not in the same league as the CIL system. Where developers are using the local authority for building control purposes, they have to notify them under the building regs. It would be perfectly possible to have a joint form so that there would be hardly any extra work. It has been a statutory duty to notify the planning authority in Scotland since 2009, and developers did not raise this requirement as an issue or a cost when the impact of those changes was assessed recently by the Scottish Government. It is a relatively minor thing for people to do but it could have a significant effect in improving the system of making sure that people are adhering to conditions and to the planning application that has been approved. In our view, it would be a useful small reform. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate as we enter into the enforcement chapter of this part of the Bill. I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his Amendment 153D, which at first hearing seems attractive but is, I think, unworkable. As the noble Lord pointed out, the problem is that there is no sanction if the person required to submit a retrospective application does not do so. I doubt whether failing to make a planning application could be made an offence, given that the authority has the sanction of enforcement action. In any case, a fine and conviction would not generate a planning application. In practice, the planning status of an unauthorised development is often regularised when the property is to be sold, in order to reassure the prospective purchaser. The developer will either make a retrospective application of his own volition or apply for a lawful development certificate, depending on whether the time limits for taking enforcement action have expired. Both of these carry a fee, as noble Lords will know.

In speaking to Amendment 154, my noble friend Lord Avebury, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has made interesting points about a possible ambiguity in Clause 108. I can assure my noble friend that it is not our policy for both limbs of Clause 108 to operate on the same case. We see Clause 108 as an either/or process, depending on what happens first. If enforcement action has been taken, the council can decline to determine a retrospective planning application. If a retrospective planning application has been made and the council takes enforcement action in time, there could be no appeal on ground A. The aim is that if someone is seeking to obtain planning permission for an unauthorised development, they should have one bite of the cherry—not two, but they should not be denied their one bite. They must follow the first path that they take, to avoid the ambiguity that can occur.

My noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, reported that they had met the Minister, my noble friend Lady Hanham, last week and these concerns were discussed. I am not sure that the three-year time limit proposed by the amendments will necessarily solve the problem identified. However, my noble friend Lord Avebury can be assured that we want the same outcome and we shall continue to consider the points that he has made.

My noble friend used the illustration of Gypsies and Travellers. I emphasise that none of the enforcement provisions in the Bill is aimed at any particular group. It would be invidious to suggest that any particular section of the population was especially prone to breaching planning control.

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Amendment 155, tabled by my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, is not necessary, as new Section 61W, to be introduced by Clause 107, which we have just considered, applies to retrospective planning applications in the same way as it applies to standard planning applications. The department has deposited a draft statutory instrument in the House Library that specifies the type of developments to which the pre-application consultation provisions will apply.

On Amendment 170CH in the name of my noble friend Lord Greaves, we are reluctant to impose a further statutory requirement of this nature on developers, particularly when we cannot know whether local planning authorities will be likely to use the information routinely or only exceptionally. If a developer is suspected of having failed to comply with any pre-commencement conditions attached to a planning permission, the authority’s enforcement team is still able to take action after the commencement date, so there is no weakening of enforcement powers once work has started.

We are aware that some local planning authorities have informal arrangements for commencements of work to be notified. Local planning authorities are best placed to decide whether such arrangements are appropriate for their areas and where they consider that they would bring benefits and not impose an unnecessary burden on the applicants.

As I say, this has been an interesting debate, and I hope the noble Lords are reassured by the Government’s proposals in the Bill and that they will not press their amendments to a vote.

[Lord Greaves]

The problem with enforcement is that it is inevitably reactive when it depends on people making complaints. However, there is no need for it to be reactive in the case of new developments. We all know just how much annoyance is caused when someone in the street is seen to get away with doing various things for which other people apply for planning permission and pay fees. We all know how someone can do it; they can stretch the system out for quite a long time if they want to do so. A system under which there was automatic notification and inspection of the work would seriously cut down on development that did not have planning permission. As I have said before, the Government say that it is a major imposition to ask people simply to say when they are starting work, but that is not true. The Minister said that we cannot know how many authorities would use this provision. Perhaps the people who are promoting this amendment might try to find out.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. He said that he did not think my amendment could be made to work because it had no sanction, but when I moved the amendment I suggested that one could impose a fixed penalty sanction for failure to comply, which hopefully would deal with his concern.

I support Amendment 170CH, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. In fact, had I got round to it I would have put my name to it for the reasons that he gave. It seems to me that there could be three notifications: building control; the one that the amendment seeks to introduce; and CIL, which is triggered by the commencement of a development. I offer this to be helpful to the Government. Surely those three regulations could be rolled into one to satisfy the requirements in the noble Lord’s amendment: you could have two out and one in, so you would be ahead of the game.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and supported by my noble friend Lady Whitaker, I should like to read the record of what the noble Lord said because at this hour I did not follow it in great detail. Certainly I would be very concerned if the perception and the reality were that this clause was principally in place to deal with Gypsy and Traveller families. I know how committed both he and my noble friend are to ensuring that those families have justice. For a brief while when I sat in the noble Lord’s position, I remember answering a Question on this. If I am right, across the country something like the extra provision of one square mile of land would be sufficient to deal with the issue. It is undoubtedly the case that local authorities have not fulfilled their duties in making enough provision. However, I should like to read the record so as to understand better the technicalities of the point made by the noble Lord. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 153D withdrawn.

Clause 108 : Retrospective planning permission

Amendments 154 and 155 not moved.

Clause 108 agreed.

Clause 109 : Time limits for enforcing concealed breaches of planning control

Amendment 155A

Moved by

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

155A: Clause 109, page 89, line 17, leave out from beginning to “and” in line 19 and insert “apparent breach, or any of the matters constituting the apparent breach, has (to any extent) been deliberately concealed by any person or persons,”

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, in moving the amendment, I thought that it would be useful if I also spoke to the other amendments grouped with it. The need for Amendments 155A to 155C has arisen in the light of case law and difficulties encountered in some recent experiences. Although there is no doubt or disagreement that Clause 109 should be aimed only at the worst cases of concealment—I am sure that all noble Lords know about the case of the house in a barn in Welwyn Hatfield recently decided by the Supreme Court—the Law Society thought that the current drafting could be interpreted more widely. The Government also think that it is important that local planning authorities should be able to reassure landowners who are not responsible for breaches of planning control on their land that they are not in danger of prosecution. My noble friend Lady Hanham has written to noble Lords with an explanation of what the amendments do. Therefore, with the leave of the Committee I do not propose to go into further detail today, but if there are questions, I am happy to write to noble Lords.

Perhaps it would be easier for me to respond to Amendment 156 at the conclusion of the debate on this group. I beg to move.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

I shall speak briefly to Amendment 156 concerning the removal of time limits on enforcement. I am not sure whether this is exactly what I was aiming for because I certainly would not want to do anything which would make the enforcement last forever. However, I am quite shocked by the enforcement procedures that have been put in place close to where I am in London. The council has put an enforcement order on a conservation area, but nothing has ever happened. The people have put in French windows and large terraces, and the council was successful in getting an enforcement order. I do not know whether the owners live abroad and I do not know why it has not been possible to get anything done about it, but I wonder whether it might be that despite having the orders, you run out of time and nothing can be done. Perhaps the Minister could clarify whether all those enforcement orders last for ever or only for the time limit within which you can apply for enforcement against something. I am concerned that if a breach has occurred and enforcement action is taken but no result is achieved, the person concerned will get away with it.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we have Amendments 156A and 156B in this group, which relate to penalty levels. I thank again the RTPI, which welcomes the increase in penalty level proposed in the Bill but considers that it should be even higher. This, it is argued, will help concentrate the minds of magistrates and help focus on the potential seriousness of offences. Amendment 156A is proposed by way of probing the rationale behind the level set by the Government. Equally probing is the amendment to Clause 110(2)(b), which relates to land situated in Wales. Doubtless there is an extensive and constitutional reason why there is a difference between levels of penalty in England and Wales. Perhaps the Minister could let us know how that works.

On government Amendment 155C, it is a bit odd to serve a notice on somebody and then write them a letter and say, “Well, in a sense, we didn’t mean it”. It seems rather a bizarre solution to an issue which I accept has to be dealt with. I wonder whether there is not a more elegant way of avoiding serving the notice on the landlord in the first instance. There may be other ramifications of not doing so, but to serve a notice and then to say, “Well, don’t worry—we’re not going to prosecute”, seems rather an odd thing for government to do.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, perhaps I may address first the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes. Abolishing the limitation for enforcement action would be an extremely radical step for which the Government and planning professionals have no appetite. As we have just debated in the context of Clause 109, the Law Society thought that our original proposals for restarting the enforcement clock would have had a chilling effect on the property market. I fear that this amendment would put the markets into a deep freeze. If the amendment were to be approved, Clause 109 would become redundant; there would be no need to start the enforcement clock if there was no clock to start with. The purpose of having time limits for taking enforcement action is to provide certainty, particularly for purchasers. Excepting cases of deliberate concealment, as envisaged by Clause 109, if an unauthorised development or changes of use have not been notified within the time limits, they are probably not doing great damage. If the owner at the time was liable for an enforcement action in perpetuity, people would be reluctant to buy without a full planning history and the markets would be unwilling to lend against properties. I hope that my noble friend understands that argument.

The amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie—Amendments 156A and 156B—are designed as a probe to try to evaluate at what level we can pitch penalties. I should remind the noble Lord that we are already proposing a significant increase in the fine for failing to comply with a breach of condition notice. The maximum fine would be raised from £1,000 to £2,500, which is level 4. This increase should have a considerable deterrent effect on those who are served with a notice and might otherwise be tempted to ignore it. To increase the maximum fine even further, to £5,000, which is level 5 in England, as the amendments propose, would be disproportionate to the offence. Level 4 fines already apply to the offences of displaying an illegal advertisement and non-permanent damage to a protected tree, which are comparable offences in scale and severity. I hope that noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendments.

I remind noble Lords that this is an England-only provision; Welsh Ministers would have to consent to any change to the provisions in the 1990 Act which apply to Wales. I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

Amendment 155A agreed.

22:00

Amendment 155B

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

155B: Clause 109, page 89, leave out lines 22 to 25

Amendment 155B agreed.

Clause 109, as amended, agreed.

Amendment 155C

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

155C: After Clause 109, insert the following new Clause—
“Assurance as regards prosecution for person served with enforcement notice
In the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 after section 172 (issue and service of enforcement notice) insert—
“172A Assurance as regards prosecution for person served with notice
(1) When, or at any time after, an enforcement notice is served on a person, the local planning authority may give the person a letter—
(a) explaining that, once the enforcement notice had been issued, the authority was required to serve the notice on the person,(b) giving the person one of the following assurances—(i) that, in the circumstances as they appear to the authority, the person is not at risk of being prosecuted under section 179 in connection with the enforcement notice, or (ii) that, in the circumstances as they appear to the authority, the person is not at risk of being prosecuted under section 179 in connection with the matters relating to the enforcement notice that are specified in the letter,(c) explaining, where the person is given the assurance under paragraph (b)(ii), the respects in which the person is at risk of being prosecuted under section 179 in connection with the enforcement notice, and(d) stating that, if the authority subsequently wishes to withdraw the assurance in full or part, the authority will first give the person a letter specifying a future time for the withdrawal that will allow the person a reasonable opportunity to take any steps necessary to avoid any risk of prosecution that is to cease to be covered by the assurance.(2) At any time after a person has under subsection (1) been given a letter containing an assurance, the local planning authority may give the person a letter withdrawing the assurance (so far as not previously withdrawn) in full or part from a time specified in the letter.
(3) The time specified in a letter given under subsection (2) to a person must be such as will give the person a reasonable opportunity to take any steps necessary to avoid any risk of prosecution that is to cease to be covered by the assurance.
(4) Withdrawal under subsection (2) of an assurance given under subsection (1) does not withdraw the assurance so far as relating to prosecution on account of there being a time before the withdrawal when steps had not been taken or an activity had not ceased.
(5) An assurance given under subsection (1) (so far as not withdrawn under subsection (2)) is binding on any person with power to prosecute an offence under section 179.””

Amendment 155C agreed.

Clause 110 : Planning offences: time limits and penalties

Amendments 156 to 156B not moved.

Clause 110 agreed.

Clause 111 : Powers in relation to: unauthorised advertisements; defacement of premises

Amendment 157

Moved by

[Lord Borrie]

157: Clause 111, page 92, line 20, at end insert “and
(c) unless an appeal is submitted under subsection (16),”

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the nine other amendments in the group that stand in the names of myself and the noble Lords, Lord Black of Brentwood, Lord Smith of Finsbury and Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. Members of the Committee will immediately realise that the four of us sit in different parts of the House so it is a truly cross-party group of amendments.

It is perhaps less obvious that all four of us have had some involvement in the regulation in this country of advertisements. Three of us have been successive chairmen of the Advertising Standards Authority and the noble Lord, Lord Black, is a member of the Advertising Standards Board of Finance, which raises the finance of the authority by virtue of an impost upon advertising receipts in the industry. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, who is the current chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, is not able to be present this evening but wishes me to say to the Committee that he fully endorses the intent and purpose of these amendments.

All four noble Lords who have put their names to these amendments are, of course, well disposed to the general value and usefulness of promotion and marketing of goods and services of all kinds. This is essential to the economy and deserves one’s support. However, we are all equally appreciative that advertisements should be—in the phrase that has become common because it is the well known remit of the Advertising Standards Authority—legal, decent, honest and truthful. We accept that all advertisements need to accord with the demands of the environment and of the countryside and need therefore to comply with the requirements over the years of the Town and Country Planning Acts, including for those kinds of billboards which may distract motorists from the need for driving safely.

Town and country planning laws have long ensured that local planning authorities have adequate powers to ensure that the owners of billboards on the roadside comply with detailed legal requirements. The Bill seeks, among other things, to update these laws, and that is a fine objective and well worth pursuing. However, I am sure your Lordships will appreciate that it is important to ensure that the advertiser has an appropriate and proportionate right of appeal for any adverse ruling, such as the issue of an enforcement notice by the local planning authority to remove an advertisement. The trouble with Clause 111 as it stands is that it adopts what I might call the present London position on appeals. That is, instead of a right of appeal to local magistrates’ courts, the only so-called appeal is a claim for judicial review to the High Court—a much more expensive proposition and, even though limits on judicial review have expanded in recent years, not an ordinary appeal on the merits. Our amendments seek to replace what I have called the London position with a right of appeal to the magistrates’ court from an enforcement notice issued by a local planning authority to the effect that an outdoor ad is illegal and ought to be removed. That would be a much more proportionate and appropriate route of appeal and more apt for modern ideas of access to justice and the rule of law. After all, it is the position that has operated outside London for many a long day. Magistrates’ courts are, in my view, a valuable, perhaps unsung, and low-cost local justice resource and should be treasured.

Indeed, in recent years, High Court judges have criticised the lack of rights of appeal in London from local planning authority enforcement decisions. For example, Mr Justice Irwin, in the case of Clear Channel UK Ltd v London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in 2009, said the lack of a normal appeal process is “draconian”. Media owners are reluctant to challenge what may be, after all, an erroneous use of local planning authority power, because the costs involved in the only remedy—judicial review by the High Court—are too great. The word “draconian” to describe the lack of an appropriate appeal mechanism had earlier been used in 2003 in the case of R (on the application of Maiden Outdoor Advertising Ltd) v Lambeth London Borough Council by Lord Justice Collins, who is now a member of the Supreme Court—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Collins of Mapesbury. In these cases, where seeking judicial review is not commercially viable, natural justice is simply not being served by the present procedures, which I have outlined as the London procedure. Small businesses especially are simply deterred from challenging a possibly subjective or irrational decision by local planning authorities. Of course the local planning authority may get it right; but it may get it wrong, and it is important that a reasonable right of challenge should be provided in the legislation. The ability to access a magistrates’ court would be a fairer and more appropriate procedure.

Finally, this is, after all, a Bill dealing with localism. Magistrates’ courts are a low-cost, local judicial resource that should be cherished and welcomed. They are part of the local scene. I beg to move.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and in doing so, declare an interest as the director of the Advertising Standards Board of Finance. I support these amendments—and I talked about these issues at Second Reading—because they will ensure an equitable, consistent, and, above all, local mechanism for challenging enforcement notices across the UK. They would deal with an important point, which is that new Section 225A appears to be the only provision within Part 5 of this Bill relating to planning that lacks any right of appeal. From a practical point of view, this set of amendments is likely to be of benefit to both media owners and local authorities because, as the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said, the magistrates’ courts are best placed to provide a quick, cost-effective route to resolving disputes, something that an action for judicial review in the High Court would never be able to provide, especially when issues of fact rather than of law are likely to be in dispute. From the aspect of the principles underpinning this Bill, it would mean that a local tribunal would be able to look at issues affecting a local neighbourhood, not a remote court possibly many hundreds of miles away.

I appreciate that these are relatively technical amendments, but I underline that they are none the less of real importance to local media owners, who are an important part of the local media ecology in towns and cities up and down the country. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for receiving representations from the industry since Second Reading. The importance of this issue is also underlined by the fact that, as the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said, the signatories to this group include not just the current distinguished chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, the noble Lord, Lord Smith, but his two predecessors, the noble Lords, Lord Borrie and Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. These colleagues, who have huge experience in advertising regulation, understand greatly the importance of the local advertising industry and an equitable, fair and local treatment for it. That is what this admirable Bill is all about, and I hope that these amendments will help to tidy up this technical but important area.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I support these amendments. A powerful case has been made. When I studied the amendments, I thought a slightly different argument might be advanced. As I understand it, issues around remedying persistent problems with unauthorised advertisements in the Bill are the subject of right of appeal to magistrates’ courts. It is just the non-persistent problems and the power to remove structures in Clause 111 that the amendment seeks to bring within the remit of the magistrates’ courts. If I have misunderstood that, doubtless the Minister will put me right. But there is an imbalance between those two situations, which will be remedied by the proposition in the amendment. Quite apart from that, the amendment should stand on its own. There is a proper issue of justice here, and a right to appeal to a magistrates’ court.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, for introducing this amendment and my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood for speaking to it, as well as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. We understand the nub of the issue, as the noble Lord Borrie, presented it. It is to provide a speedier and more cost-effective means of challenging a removal notice as empowered under the Bill, especially where consent, or deemed consent, to display an advertisement already exists. But the magistrates’ courts are already heavily loaded with cases, and we should be cautious about increasing the burden on them unnecessarily. We should also be wary of giving any rogue hoarding owners the opportunity to delay the enforcement process by appealing against local authorities for no good reason.

The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, is quite right. The amendment draws heavily on the London experience. I note that these measures have been operating in London since 1995 without the benefit of a right of appeal. In that time, I understand that there have been only five judicial reviews against removal notices, so I hope that the noble Lord will understand the Government’s reasoning on this issue.

Included in the group is government Amendment 166ZA. It is a minor drafting amendment to page 100, which deletes subsection (3) of proposed new Section 225J. Noble Lords will, I am sure, have observed that the words are very similar to those in subsection (4)(a). They are superfluous and should be omitted.

22:15

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Could the Minister help us out? Why is there the differential treatment in terms of rights of appeal to a magistrates’ court—assuming I am right on that—where there are persistent problems with unauthorised advertisements, compared to those where there is simply the power to remove structures for what may be ad hoc, unauthorised display?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I think I can summarise it best by saying that they are two different orders of problems for local authorities. The reasoning for these proposals is obviously based on the London experience, which has provided local authorities in London with an effective way of dealing with the larger structure problems that one can have, where displays are put on unauthorised structures and their speedy removal is in the public interest.

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, for his support for this amendment and for that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton on the opposition Front Bench. I am bound to say that I am a bit disappointed by the Minister's response, most especially when he said that in London, which is the route followed by the Bill itself, there have not been that many judicial review claims—I think he mentioned five. A great substance of my argument is that judicial review is a most unattractive route for anybody concerned about a decision against them by the local planning authority, because it is expensive and very challenging. It is not a real right of appeal.

The rest of the country has a real right of appeal. The anomaly that exists at present—recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Black, and by my noble friend Lord McKenzie—is not recognised by the government Front Bench. It is an anomaly to have a difference between London and outside London especially, in my submission, in the context of a Localism Bill. When the emphasis is on local government and local associations, it would be so much better and simpler to have a magistrates’ court appeal. The noble Lord has said that magistrates’ courts are very busy, but he will know that that partly arises because there are many closures of them by government decision. That is undoubtedly the case.

That decision may be supported on the basis of saving money, and in some towns and areas I would accept that there is an argument for saying, “The magistrates’ court here is not fully occupied, so it could be closed down”. However, the Minister’s point is that magistrates are already overloaded with work and cannot take on what would be very sensible new work, providing access to justice for those who feel that they needed to appeal against an unfair, unreasonable or difficult local planning authority decision. Of course, I withdraw my amendment at this stage but I think the Minister will realise that we are not happy with his decision, and I hope that he will rethink the matter in due course.

Amendment 157 withdrawn.

Amendments 158 to 166 not moved.

Amendment 166ZA

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

166ZA: Clause 111, page 100, leave out lines 21 and 22

Amendment 166ZA agreed.

Amendments 166A and 166B had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Clause 111, as amended, agreed.

Clause 112 agreed.

Schedule 13 : Infrastructure Planning Commission: transfer of functions to Secretary of State

Amendment 166C not moved.

Amendment 166D

Moved by

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

166D: Schedule 13, page 345, line 17, at end insert—
“(3A) After subsection (2)(b) insert—
“(ba) in the case of an application for an order including provision authorising the compulsory acquisition of statutory undertakers’ land, the effect of the compulsory acquisition on any such statutory undertaker,”.”

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 166D, I wish to speak to a large number of amendments in this group. With this amendment we turn to Schedule 13, which covers amendments to the Planning Act 2008 dealing with the new arrangements to replace the Infrastructure Planning Commission with a new process whereby the members of the commission are transferred to the planning secretariat. However, the decisions on these major infrastructure projects will be made by a Minister who is accountable to Parliament. At Second Reading, I remarked briefly that I was extremely pleased with the way that the members of the IPC have conducted themselves and with their readiness to accept the new process. However, there is still a lot of anxiety which has been expressed to me by the CBI and by lawyers at a City firm in London who have expressed considerable doubts as to whether the Bill adequately provides a seamless transition from the old process as set up in the 2008 Act to the new process set out in Schedule 13 to the Bill.

The Committee will be relieved to hear that I will not discuss this large group of amendments in detail. I have discussed the matter with my noble friend on the Front Bench. It is clear that she and her department are well aware of the arguments that have been advanced. I have been given an assurance that she and her department are very ready to speak to those who have put their views to me and which are reflected in these amendments.

The purpose of the amendments is, first, to ensure, as I said, a seamless transition, but it goes wider than that. The amendments also seek to remove the need for parallel and separate consent requirements so that the development consent orders regime is truly a one-stop shop, which was what was originally promoted by the previous Government when they brought forward the 2008 Act.

Secondly, they seek to introduce some limited flexibility regarding compliance with what is currently a one-size-fits-all set of procedures and requirements for applications. Thirdly, we want to clarify the ability to modify draft development consent orders as they are going through the process and to replicate other order-making regimes in terms of what criminal offences development consent orders may include; and generally remove what is regarded as unnecessary gold plating now that decisions are being returned from the Infrastructure Planning Commission—a quango—to Ministers. This was something for which a number of us argued fiercely during the passage of the 2008 Act. I am delighted that it is now being implemented in this Bill. That is what we are aiming to do here.

I shall not go through the details of all the amendments, but I should like to say that I am grateful for the offer made by my noble friend on the Front Bench that the Government will consider this matter. I am sure that we will be told that the Bill in fact provides the seamless transition from the old to the new. Nevertheless, anxieties remain. It is a hugely important matter that concerns all major national infrastructure projects such as major airports, new power stations, major transmission lines and so on. It is very important that there should be no hiatus in the process that transfers from the existing system the new.

Before I sit down, one amendment in this group also amends the Planning Act 2008 and concerns minor electricity distribution lines. The Act originally made provisions relating to a new transmission or distribution line that was,

“expected to be less than 132 kilovolts”.

My Amendment 166VZA suggests that it should,

“be 132 kilovolts or less”.

It may seem that there is no difference, but there is in fact a considerable difference. I am told on good authority that Ministers in the Department for Energy and Climate Change are wholly in favour of that amendment, and I hope that perhaps it might be accepted.

However, the bulk of amendments in my name in this group refer to the matters that I have described—the need for a seamless and, I hope, simpler transition from the existing responsibilities of the Infrastructure Planning Commission to make planning decisions for these major projects to its different role of preparing the matter and making recommendations; and the Secretary of State will make the decisions. I beg to move.

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

My name is also associated with Amendment 166U. At one stage, I had thought that I had put my name to one or two of the other amendments and it indeed appeared in earlier versions of the Marshalled List. However, for some reason my name seems to have been disassociated with those amendments. Nevertheless, I support the thrust of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and I emphasise the need for a seamless transition.

I do not want to take up the time of the Committee at this hour of night but I wish to mention two amendments in particular. The first, Amendment 166R, raises an important point of principle on the extent to which a development consent order can deal with all the consents—the one-stop shop that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned. This was particularly important in the setting up of the Planning Act regime. Noble Lords will recall from the debates at that time that the Terminal Five proposals involved 37 different applications under, I think, different pieces of legislation. The beauty of the development consent order is that it was supposed to bring all this together. The problem is that quite a number of consents are outside this process, particularly those involving the Environment Agency and Natural England. For example, under Section 109 of the Water Resources Act, the Environment Agency deals with consent issues where there is construction work in or near principal water courses. Thereby, if a nationally significant infrastructure project is next to a water course, there is a separate application to the Environment Agency.

I submit that that does not make sense. Adequate protection can be given within the development consent order. By way of example, if the Minister is taking this away to think about it, I mention the London Gateway Port Harbour Empowerment Order 2008, which was made under a similar process: the Harbours Act 1964, where adequate provision is made for the Environment Agency consents.

I mention a second matter. Amendment 166J concerns Section 114 of the 2008 Act. At present, there is concern among developers that, in effect, you get one chance to get the application right. If you have to make amendments to it, the issue then becomes whether they are substantial and, if they are, there is no way of amending the proposal properly in the process. In effect, you go back to square one. It is a bit like snakes and ladders, except that they all go back to the beginning.

I do not expect Ministers to comment on live cases, but one issue has arisen in the past few days with an application before the Infrastructure Planning Commission. It has refused to allow an amendment to an application. Does the developer then go back to square one to propose a development that the applicant presumably believes is inferior to the one they seek? I ask the Ministers to take that away to see whether they can give any flexibility in the process.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd on these amendments. They are terribly important to help to provide, as near as possible, the one-stop shop for big developments and to give business confidence in the process. As we have said in previous days in Committee, that is one of the most important things: to help get projects developed quickly—and the reason for the 2008 Planning Act and the changes proposed through the Bill.

I shall speak to two groups of amendments in my name. The first is Amendments 166UAA, 166BA, 166 UBB, 166UCA and 166UE, which concern the proposal that the national policy statements should be approved by both Houses of Parliament rather than just the House of Commons. It is interesting that, yesterday, the House of Commons debated and approved the six national policy statements for energy. They have been around for a long time in draft form and been subject to consultation, and it is good that the House of Commons debated them, but I suggest that there is an equal need for this House to debate such national policy statements, because there is a great deal of expertise among your Lordships about issues that are likely to come within the national policy statement framework. It seems equitable that we should debate them too. I am sure that noble Lords will have good contributions to make, and I hope that the noble Lord or the noble Baroness—I do not know which of them will reply—will take that seriously. It should have happened under the 2008 Act, but it did not, so here we are today.

The other amendment in my name, Amendment 166VZB, was proposed to me by Network Rail—which, as the Committee will know, is in the private sector but receives about £4 billion of public money. As the Committee will also know, the Government are rightly putting great pressure on Network Rail to save money. It is involved in a large number of usually quite small investments to create more capacity, meet growing demand and improve network reliability. Of course, many of these investments require planning permissions and other consents to deliver the works effectively on time and within budget. This amendment is designed to facilitate the process and, clearly, to reduce costs.

I am afraid that I have to go into a little of the background on this. Network Rail is the statutory successor in title to the original railway companies and it has fairly extensive permitted development rights, or PDRs, which confer the necessary planning authority, subject to prior approval in some cases, for works. However, it is often necessary to seek additional powers to supplement those powers both for related works outside the existing rail corridor and to acquire land and rights over land.

The methods for seeking authority for railway works has historically been by means of Private Bills—which we do not often see these days, other than for very big projects and then they tend to be hybrid Bills—and more recently under the Transport and Works Act 1992. In England, the procedure is currently also covered by the Planning Act 2008, which requires consent for developments that are, or form part of, a nationally significant infrastructure project, or NSIP, to be authorised by a development consent order. An NSIP is a project for the construction or alteration of a railway, but not where the alteration of a railway is authorised by permitted development rights. Of course, there is no national policy statement for railway projects at the moment. Whether there will be in the future, we do not know, so further guidance is not available. Therefore, many of the Network Rail schemes will not be covered by PDRs, and it will need to seek development consent in addition to using existing PDRs.

It is interesting that, for example, Network Rail is, as noble Lords will know, in the middle of a project to electrify the Great Western main line. It involves demolishing a number of bridges, some track widening and lots of little bits of work over 100 miles or so of track—two track or four track. Discussions with the IPC and the Department for Transport have revealed some questions about the interpretation of the rules in relation to the delivery of rail projects. Most of them are covered by PDRs but some elements of this scheme may not be. They may include a mixture of works authorised by PDRs and those to be authorised in other ways. Where works are covered by PDRs, the Planning Act is not clear whether they can be, or whether they have to be, included in a development consent application as part of an NSIP. That is causing delay and quite a lot of concern.

Network Rail clearly needs flexibility. If it takes, say, two or three years to go through a process between a design being sufficiently advanced and the start of construction, that is going to cause a lot of delay to its projects. Experience to date suggests that the time to be allowed for the full IPC process, from consultation to authorisation, is approximately 30 months. Whether the process would be quicker with a hybrid Bill, as is proposed for the new high-speed line, I do not know. I suspect that it is a bit quicker but no one is suggesting a hybrid Bill for the Great Western.

A procedure carried out by means of permitted development rights can be completed within a matter of weeks where proposals are notified as a matter of policy. Where prior approvals are required, it may take a little longer, but it is also a lot quicker.

There is also the question of minor works. There is no threshold for rail schemes requiring development consent. Where PDRs do not exist, minor works such as alterations to structures, which are not nationally significant, might be caught up in the definition of an NSIP and therefore require consent. Therefore, this all needs clarification.

I am pleased that Network Rail welcomes the changes that the Localism Bill will make to the planning Act, but there need to be further discussions between the Department for Transport and Ministers to clarify some of the issues which I raised and which this amendment would help to satisfy. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response. I am happy to have more discussions, but I hope that they will take Network Rail’s concerns seriously in this regard.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. I declare an interest in that my eldest son, Thomas, is a ganger with Network Rail; he is not in the high echelons of management, but he is a ganger with firsthand experience of working on the line, doing maintenance and improvements. No one wants a situation in which Network Rail, or any organisation, can disrupt public services by not fulfilling its tasks properly. Carelessness can lead to other things. Nevertheless, Network Rail, like many other companies, needs the process to be transparent and speedy. I know that it is difficult to get planning applications—or indeed any applications, such as applications for improvements to the rail network—processed speedily, but speed is needed. Anything that improves that must be a good thing. I hope that the Minister will be able to give my noble friend a positive response.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I and my noble friend Lord Tope have five amendments in this group. In view of the time, and in the hope that we might get on to the next group before we go home, I would be happy for the Minister to write to me detailing the government’s responses to those five amendments. If he agrees to do that, I shall not say anything further on this tonight.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, this is a very large group of amendments, many of which are quite technical. None of them has been spoken to in any great detail. I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd for his technical paper, which helped me on this, and for his guidance. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, that I puzzled over his reference to 132 kilowatts and I was not quite sure what the amendment was about. I now know that it is important, although I am not quite clear why.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, perhaps I should have explained it with one extra sentence. Anyway, it is kilovolts. Rather interestingly, the Public Bill Office printed it as kilowatts at the beginning and we had to put that right. The point is that the voltage for these distribution lines is 132, and therefore we wanted 132 “and below”, and not the ones that would have to go to the IPC, to be above. It is simply a matter of getting the wording right as originally intended in the 2008 planning Act.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that explanation. That helps me. These amendments relate to the decision to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission, with the ink not yet dry on the 2008 Act, which was passed under the previous Government. The House would not expect me to welcome that change with unbridled enthusiasm, but now is not the time to revisit old arguments in detail. We would agree that infrastructure investment is vital to the UK economy and jobs and the commitment to retain the fast-track regime is to be welcomed. In particular, we support the retention of the existing timetable for decision-making, as clarified by the government amendment. The Bill includes provision for national policy statements to be scrutinised and approved by Parliament before designation. There seems to be no reason why this role should be limited to the House of Commons and, accordingly, we support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is on the same page. I have no doubt that the collective wisdom of noble Lords covering the policy areas concerned would supplement the expertise of another place. Perhaps the Minister will say why the Government consider this to be a role just for the House of Commons. Section 9 of the Planning Act 2008 includes a role for both Houses.

22:45

On the matter of NPSs, will the Minister update us on a timetable for when the full suite will be available? I think that it is some way off in relation to airports, and we have heard that there will not be one in relation to railways.

In Amendment 166UAB, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, seeks to expand on the explanation of how the NPS relates to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change. We support what he is seeking to achieve, but wonder why this is not covered by Section 5(8) of the 2008 Act.

In Amendment 166VZA, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, proposes a change to the definition of nationally significant projects concerning electric lines above ground. I think that I now understand what that is about.

The amendments tabled by my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd, and many of those tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, are claimed to be either minor changes to the regime in the light of experience and further streamlining, particularly given that some of the detailed checks and balances were inserted because the IPC was an unelected body. To the extent that that is so, of course we support them.

We support Amendment 166U, referred to by my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd, which seeks greater clarity on transitional arrangements. This was debated in another place, when assurances were given by the Minister that there would be continuity across the two regimes, with no repetition of stages that had been completed. Rather than leaving this on a case-by-case basis, we support the amendment that seeks to put clarity in the Bill. The issue raised by the Minister relating to personnel changing their titles seems to be covered by the amendment.

Amendments relating to modifications to draft development orders seem to meet practical concerns, and we await the Minister's response. We support Amendments 166G and 166H, which reinstate the requirement for all interested parties to be notified if the three-month deadline for decision-making is to be extended. We await the Minister's response to the amendments concerning the removal of additional consents and procedures, in light of the fact that it will now be the Secretary of State making the decisions.

Amendment 116R appears to be somewhat more than minor. It would require the sweeping away of myriad different consents from regulators in so far as they relate to construction projects. It is understood that the amendment would still require such consents, but would cause them to be included in the development consent order. Consents from regulators such as Natural England and the Environment Agency are particularly to the point. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that the involvement of those agencies will be channelled through the process so there will be only a one-stop shop.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley's amendment concerning railway projects was interesting. I think I can summarise his position by saying that it appears that Network Rail requires help and discussion to make sure that the projects it has in the pipeline and will undertake in future can be dealt with in an efficient and effective way.

I have spoken to the key amendments that I wanted to highlight. I support my noble friend Lord Berkeley's amendments. I understand and support the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is doing with his amendment. I believe that the point covered by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in Amendment 166UAB is probably already catered for—but the Minister may put me right on that. This seems to be a sensible collection of amendments. They will make sure that we have the proper transition from the current arrangements to the future. I hope that the Minister will be able to give comfort to noble Lords who tabled them.

[Lord Berkeley]

Perhaps I might follow up something that my noble friend Lord McKenzie asked the Minister about the timetable of national policy statements. As I said earlier, the energy ones were published and agreed yesterday, which was great. We have heard nothing yet on ports, airports and interchanges, which will come out of transport. We do not even have any dates for their publication. Perhaps the port statement is in draft form—I am not sure—and there are probably other NPSs coming from other departments. I do not expect an answer from the Minister now, but it would be good to have a letter with an expected timetable. At the moment, industry sees the prospect of several years of vacuum with no policies to work to. It would be very helpful to have firm timetables.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, this large group contains a range of amendments that seek to amend various provisions in the Localism Bill that amend the Planning Act 2008. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, has not moved his amendment, which addresses a drafting flaw in the Localism Bill, because government Amendment 166VE deals with it. I am grateful that the noble and learned Lord did not worry us with moving his amendment.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked when the full NPS will be available. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked about the ports and the timetable for other such important NPSs. I will write to noble Lords on that and on any other technical issues that I do not cover in my response.

My noble friend Lord Jenkin has tabled a range of important technical amendments that aim to ensure that the new major infrastructure planning regime is as efficient as possible. These address matters such as: land subject to compulsory purchase, Amendments 166D, 166E, 166L, 166M 166N and 166P; notification where a deadline is extended, Amendments 166G and 166H; the power to amend an application after submission, Amendments 166J and 166K; the power to waive compliance with regulatory requirements, Amendment 166Q; the application of Section 150, Amendment 166R; offences, Amendments 166S and 166T; transitional provisions, Amendment 166U, which was also spoken to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby; judicial review, Amendment 166V; discharge requirements, Amendment 166W; and the decision-making period, Amendment 166VCA.

I can assure my noble friend that, as he suggested, we share the same goals. It is vital for the future of the UK that the major infrastructure planning regime must be as efficient as possible. If my noble friend will permit, I would like to consider the points he has raised in more detail and consult him and others between now and Report to see whether anything further can be done on the issues he has raised. With that assurance, I hope he will not move these amendments at the appropriate point.

Amendment 166KA, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Tope, would remove certain types of development usually connected with underground projects from the definition of associated development in the Planning Act 2008. The ability to grant consent for associated development is critical to the operation of the single consent regime. The amendment would require developers to seek multiple planning consents for major projects, adding to the cost and complexity of making the application, which is precisely the situation we are trying to avoid, so I hope the noble Lords will not pursue this amendment too far.

Amendment 166UAB, which is also tabled by my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Tope, seeks to require a national policy statement to address carbon emission targets and national policy objectives on assessing and adapting to climate change. I fully sympathise with my noble friends’ concerns regarding climate change and carbon reduction, but the requirements of the Climate Change Act 2008 are binding on Ministers in the exercise of any of their functions, including national policy statements. Moreover, the Planning Act 2008 already places significant requirements in relation to climate change on Ministers when carrying out their functions in relation to national policy statements. I therefore do not believe this amendment to be necessary.

Amendments 166UZA, 166UZB, 166UAA, 166UBA, 166UBB, 166UCA and 166UE in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and Amendments 166UA, 166UB, 166UC and 166UD in the name of my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Tope, seek to provide for positive approval of national policy statements by both Houses of Parliament and remove the 21-sitting day timetable for consideration.

The 2008 Act provides both Houses with a full scrutiny role in relation to national policy statements and indeed this House has already undertaken a very detailed scrutiny of the first of them, including those on energy and waste water. This role will not change. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked about debates on NPSs. The 2008 Act provides for a Committee of either House to scrutinise national policy statements and, if they recommend it, for a debate to be held on the Floor of the House. The key point to note is that the Localism Bill supplements this with a requirement for approval in the other place.

National policy statements are policy documents, not legislation. This House has never had a role in approving policy documents and it does not automatically follow that because the Localism Bill provides for the other place to have such a role, this House should also. If both Houses had the authority to approve a national policy statement, but one were to reject it and the other approve it, this would call into question the legal standing of the document and any planning decisions that were to rely upon it. This could lead to extensive delay to both the national policy statements and the provision of vital infrastructure.

The discretion to approve a national policy statement using the negative procedure and the introduction of a timetable of 21 sitting days are intended to ensure that the approval process is both efficient and flexible. Their removal could ultimately result in further delay. It is important to note that the DPRRC raised no concerns about these provisions. Given this, and the explanations I have given, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

Amendment 166VZA, in the name of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, and Amendment 166VZB, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, would amend provisions of the 2008 Act which relate to electricity lines and railway projects respectively. I have considered these proposals carefully and concluded that in both cases the amendments could be effected by amending Part 3 of the Planning Act. The procedure already exists in secondary legislation to achieve this and therefore there is no need to adopt these amendments. On electricity lines, I would of course be delighted to facilitate a discussion between my noble friend Lord Jenkin and colleagues in the Department for Energy and Climate Change. On railways, I would be equally happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my officials in the Department for Transport to discuss the process further. In short, if there is a problem that needs to be ironed out, I am up for it.

Government Amendments 116VA, 116VB, 116VC, 116VD and 187A extend the new power in Section 116 of the Bill to Wales to cover non-devolved matters and provide greater flexibility in the acceptance of applications.

I hope that I have given sufficient reassurance to the Committee on the matters that concern noble Lords to allow them to withdraw the amendments they have proposed, and I hope the House will agree to the government amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Hanham when the Question is put.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, we have had an extremely good debate. I am very grateful indeed to my noble friend for his readiness to accept the need to re-examine the question of the transition and to make sure that the Bill is appropriate now that major decisions on infrastructure are going to be taken by the Secretary of State. That is the difference.

On the question of the approval of the national policy statements, I moved an amendment in 2008 to say that they should be not just scrutinised but approved. Therefore, I agree very much with the proposal in this Bill that the national policy statements should be approved. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley said, the energy statements were approved earlier this week. The difficulty that was put to me at the time was: if you are going to have both Houses approving, what happens if one says one thing and one says the other? The argument could be that you then have some sort of ping-pong or something, but it is not legislation—that is the point that my noble friend has made. Therefore, although I have much sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, I did not put my name to his amendments because I did not think that they were workable. My noble friend on the Front Bench has given a very good explanation of that. I am grateful to him for what he said and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 166D withdrawn.

Amendment 166E not moved.

Amendment 166F had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendments 166G to 166T not moved.

Schedule 13 agreed.

23:00

Clause 113 : Transitional provision in connection with abolition

Amendment 166U not moved.

Clause 113 agreed.

Clause 114 : National policy statements

Amendments 166UZA to 166V not moved.

Clause 114 agreed.

Amendment 166VZA to 166VZC not moved.

Clause 115 : Power to alter effect of requirement for development consent on other consent regimes

Amendments 166VA to 166VC

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

166VA: Clause 115, page 106, line 12, leave out “subsection (5)” and insert “this section”

166VB: Clause 115, page 106, leave out lines 20 to 24

166VC: Clause 115, page 106, line 26, at end insert—
“(8A) An order under subsection (5) may not affect—
(a) a requirement for a devolved consent to be obtained for, or given in relation to, development, or(b) whether development may be authorised by a devolved consent.(8B) A consent is “devolved” for the purposes of subsection (8A) if—
(a) provision for the consent would be within the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales if the provision were contained in an Act of the Assembly,(b) provision for the consent is, or could be, made by the Welsh Ministers in an instrument made under an Act,(c) the consent is not within subsection (6)(c) and the Welsh Ministers have a power or duty—(i) to decide, or give directions as to how to decide, whether the consent is given,(ii) to decide, or give directions as to how to decide, some or all of the terms on which the consent is given, or(iii) to revoke or vary the consent, or(d) the consent is within subsection (6)(c) and the notice has to be given to the Welsh Ministers or otherwise brought to their attention.”

Amendments 166VA to 166VC agreed.

Clause 115, as amended, agreed.

Clause 116 : Secretary of State’s directions in relation to projects of national significance

Amendment 166VCA not moved.

Clause 116 agreed.

Clauses 117 to 120 agreed.

Amendment 166VD

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

166VD: After Clause 120, insert the following new Clause—
“Acceptance of applications for development consent
(1) The Planning Act 2008 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 55(3) (conditions for acceptance of application) omit paragraphs (b) and (d) (application may be accepted only if it complies with requirements as to form and contents and with any standards set, and gives reasons for any failure to follow applicable guidance).
(3) In section 55(3) after paragraph (e) insert “, and
(f) that the application (including accompaniments) is of a standard that the Secretary of State considers satisfactory.”(4) In section 55 after subsection (5) insert—
“(5A) The Secretary of State, when deciding whether the Secretary of State may reach the conclusion in subsection (3)(f), must have regard to the extent to which—
(a) the application complies with the requirements in section 37(3) (form and contents of application) and any standards set under section 37(5), and(b) any applicable guidance given under section 37(4) has been followed in relation to the application.”(5) In section 37(3) (requirements as to form and contents of application) after “must” insert “, so far as necessary to secure that the application (including accompaniments) is of a standard that the Secretary of State considers satisfactory”.”

Amendment 166VD agreed.

Clause 121 agreed.

Amendment 166VE

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

166VE: After Clause 121, insert the following new Clause—
“Timetables for reports and decisions on applications for development consent
(1) The Planning Act 2008 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 98(3) (Examining authority must report on application within 3 months beginning with deadline for completing its examination) for the words from “beginning” onwards substitute “beginning with—
(a) the deadline for completion of its examination of the application, or(b) (if earlier) the end of the day on which it completes the examination.”(3) In section 107(1) (which provides for the application to be decided within 3 months of the start day but is amended by this Act to provide for decision within 3 months of the deadline under section 98(3))—
(a) for “with the” substitute “with—(a) the”, and(b) at the end insert “, or(b) (if earlier) the end of the day on which the Secretary of State receives a report on the application under section 74(2)(b) or 83(1)(b).””

Amendment 166VE agreed.

Clause 122 : Development consent subject to requirement for further approval

Amendment 166W not moved.

Clause 122 agreed.

Clause 123 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)]

In Clause 124, manuscript Amendment 166WA is tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. Is that correct?

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

If Members look at the groupings list, they will see that for some strange reason, Amendment 166WA is out of kilter and comes after the debate on whether Clause 124 should stand part. However, I believe that the amendment is a precursor to that debate and therefore it may be helpful and convenient to the Committee if this one amendment is now dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, it is now 23:05. Everyone in this Chamber, including the staff of the House, will be here again at 10 o’clock in the morning. The agreement made with the usual channels was, as I understand it, that we would finish as close as possible to 10 pm. It is now 11.05 pm. My colleague, who has been on the Front Bench all day, wishes to depart. We have plenty of amendments to deal with tomorrow and I suggest that we deal with this manuscript amendment then.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I trust that the amendment can be dealt with tonight. I do not believe it will take very long. I understand that people are tired; I am tired too. Let us get on and get some business done.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, this is disgraceful. To help the Government we agreed to a back-to-back Committee stage, which is most unusual. We agreed to an early start tomorrow to help the Government. We have already stretched to 11 o’clock tonight. This manuscript amendment is closely linked to Clause 124 which is a substantial debate that we ought to have when minds are relatively fresh. It is best done tomorrow. I can see nods of assent from some of the coalition Benches. That is the way we should leave it tonight. We have made better progress than I thought we would today, and we have played our part in that. I think we should now draw the line.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I know that it has been a long and hard-working day and all in the Chamber will appreciate the work that has been put in by colleagues around the House. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, was perhaps not party to some of the earlier discussions. I did not reach an agreement with the usual channels at any point to finish at 10 o’clock or close to 10’clock this evening. I was clear about the progress that we all wished to make—I am sorry, I am a little out of breath from seeking to ensure that I reached the Chamber in order to respond to the Leader of the Opposition. I was clear in the discussions I had that, in order to assist the House to complete the Committee stage of the Localism Bill tomorrow, which I know is the ambition of all noble Lords, it was likely that we would need to sit until around 11 o’clock tonight depending, of course, on the progress of business. I know that colleagues on these Benches and on the Front Bench opposite have striven to work through our business today.

When my noble friend Lord Shutt referred to the manuscript amendment, he was genuinely trying to be helpful. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, looks puzzled because I know that Whips are not usually like that, but I can assure him that in this House, the Whips do try to be helpful because I understand that there have been discussions with the Minister that might elucidate this issue. It looked as though it would be helpful to do that tonight, and clearly anything that is done now reduces the amount of time we need to spend on the Bill tomorrow. I know that the opposition Front Bench is as keen as anyone to complete the Committee stage. I hope that this is helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for tabling a manuscript amendment this morning, but as a result of discussions with my colleagues, it seemed helpful to have this amendment on the table in order to assist progress over the summer towards the Report stage. It is something that might be considered as a compromise and a way through what is a very difficult position with certain sections of the public. That is why we did it. But now we seem to be spending a lot of time discussing whether to take the amendment when we could either be considering it or we could be going home. My view, and what I think is the view of my colleagues, is that it should be properly grouped with the debate on whether Clause 124 should stand part of the Bill. The debate on this amendment is an integral part of the debate on Clause 124.

I do not blame anybody for it, but at the last minute the amendment was put in the wrong place, and perhaps it should have been tabled the other way around the clause stand part debate. But it has been tabled and it can be discussed tomorrow with Clause 124. If having it on the agenda tomorrow is a procedural difficulty, I will not move it tonight so we can all go home in the knowledge that it exists and that we can discuss it as part of the consideration of Clause 124. I have to say that I will not be here, so my noble friend Lord Tope will deal with it. The amendment needs to be discussed with Clause 124, because it is part and parcel of the same debate. I do not think that having them together will take any further time. If there is a procedural problem about that, I shall not move the amendment and take advice from whomever.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I know that my noble friend is trying to help everyone. I think that he has managed to confuse us even more, which was not his intention. I know that all noble Lords want to have a debate on his amendment. It is clear that, even if the amendment were not down, it would be possible to speak to it at Clause 124 stand part. I suggest that we should do that tomorrow, but on the understanding that tomorrow is when we complete Committee stage, which I know will bring a sigh of relief to all those who have worked hard on this Bill so far.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I thank the Chief Whip for that accommodation. I apologise unreservedly for misleading the House. My noble friend Lady Crawley informs me that usual channels agreed to finish at around 23:00, not 22:00. I beg your Lordships’ pardon. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. It is best that his amendment be debated tomorrow, as the noble Baroness said.

We will strive to finish this stage of the Bill tomorrow, but I cannot give an absolute commitment. I think that we should finish in good time and we will do our utmost to do so.

[Lord Greaves]

I shall just let the amendment be. Thank you.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 11.12 pm.