Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Baroness Cumberlege Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Grand Committee

Debate on whether Clause 38 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken in this session of the Committee, I declare an interest in that I have a legal case pending concerning a planning application. I have taken advice from the Clerk of the Parliaments and have been told that the sub judice rule does not apply here. I also have some interests in the register which I declare.

I will talk to the short version of the amendment, bearing in mind that we are coming to the end of this Committee stage. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said about the report of the Delegated Powers Committee. I have also read it and understand what it says. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, is on that committee and will know the detail. I have also looked at the House of Lords Constitution Committee, which makes it very clear that Henry VIII clauses are a departure from constitutional principle and should be contemplated only when a full and clear explanation and justification is provided.

Throughout this Committee, there has been quite a divergence of views on the purpose of the Bill. The Government see it as a way of building the maximum number of houses in the minimum of time. Local people see it as an opportunity to make the best decisions for their towns and villages, and that should be sovereign—I use that word advisedly.

The Henry VIII clause is not justified in the Bill. The Bill is an attempt to overtake the Localism Act by giving more power to the Secretary of State. I have found this tendency threaded throughout the Bill. On another clause, when I voiced my concerns, the Minister told me that the Secretary of State would use his powers sparingly. In a previous debate, my noble friend talked about consequential and minor amendments and the rest of it. That might be true of this Secretary of State, but I do not derive any comfort from that because, as we all know, attitudes change and the situation could be very different with a future Secretary of State.

I urge my noble friend to reflect on what the Bill is all about. I think he will agree that it is part of a raft of planning Acts. It is not dealing with the security of the state in a time of war, or to tie the hands of the Government in foreign negotiations. It is about ordinary people having some say in their communities and in planning the future of their neighbourhoods. Yet the Secretary of State wants to introduce an autocratic power to rule over good people in case they do not conform to his aspirations. I find that outrageous. I seek to defend the aspirations of good people who have their communities at heart. I strongly resist the incorporation of the clause, as I feel it has no part in the Bill.

Sadly, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, cannot be here this evening. He has a family engagement that he tells me is a three-line Whip and he sends his apologies to the Committee. However, I am truly delighted that I have the support of the noble and learned, Lord, Lord Judge. He is a wise and wonderful person who is internationally admired for his in-depth knowledge of the British constitution, which is what we are talking about. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who has proved to be a doughty fighter throughout the Bill. I think of him not as a Rottweiler, but more as a terrier.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

It is the lion that represents Millwall, is it not? I shall be brief, but not as brief as perhaps I should be because, with respect, this clause is totally flawed. I shall not go over the debate I had with the Minister over what is now the Wales Act, but we still have to face the fact that under the clause as it now stands following the debate on Amendment 129, the Secretary of State in London will be empowered to overrule the legislation of the elected Assembly. There is no arguing; that is what it says, and that is what it means. I understand that the Minister would have no intention of telling us anything other than how he envisages this power being used, and of course I accept it from him, but the power is being given to wipe out the enactments of the National Assembly for Wales without so much as a reference to it.

In my respectful submission, it is subsection (2) of this clause that is so unacceptable: the Henry VIII clause, the legislation that will set aside the legislation. It will give power to the Secretary of State to say, “I don’t like this legislation any more” or “I don’t like this part of this legislation any more, I’m going to get rid of it”. That is what we are empowering if we allow this to go through.

With Henry VIII clauses, you have to ask whether they are justified. Here, you ask the question: how is it justified? The answer to that question is that it is not justified. I looked through the Explanatory Notes. They state:

“Part 3 Final Provisions … Clauses 37-40”—


that covers Clause 38—

“and 42 are self-explanatory”.

That is it. No doubt the clause is self-explanatory, but, with great respect, so what? Self-explanatory is no sort of justification. It is not even an attempt to justify.

Assiduously, I hunted further and found what the department’s memorandum tells us the clause is for:

“There are a number of consequential changes being made by the Bill, particularly those flowing from the addition of a new procedure for modifying neighbourhood plans, restricting the imposition of planning conditions, and amendments to compulsory purchase legislation”.


That is a very neat summary of a very complex piece of legislation, but this is the justification that the department advances:

“It is possible that not all such consequential changes have been identified in the Bill. As such it is considered prudent for the Bill to contain a power to deal with these in secondary legislation”.


Is that any sort of justification?

Going back to the wording, if,

“the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,

is an entirely subjective discretion, entirely uncontrolled in any way by the legislation. Is that really what the department wants? Well, the department may want it, but we are being invited to give powers to a Secretary of State years down the line to repeal an Act of Parliament, the whole Act, the Act that noble Lords have spent four days working on in this Committee. By this provision, if it comes into force, it can all be wiped out. That is what Henry VIII means.

I repeat that I totally accept the good faith of the Minister, I accept it completely and utterly, but he will not be the Minister 10 or 20 years from now, and the list of legislation that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, gave us reminds us of how long this legislation could last. So because the department thinks there is a vague, undefined possibility that may arise in the future, I respectfully suggest that we are being landed with a hugely dangerous piece of legislation because it is totally unjustified. Of course the future is unsure. We all know that; Shakespeare told us that. It is the most important line he wrote. We know that the future is unsure, but it is not a justification for giving literally sweeping—sweeping away—powers to the Executive. That is not how we should operate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, very much for his constructive approach and say that it is certainly not my intention not to engage on this between Committee and Report. I think that I indicated that on the previous amendment, which he so eloquently moved. I am very happy to engage with noble Lords.

I would like to say one or two things in response to the debate, and I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who has been totally consistent on this issue and obviously speaks from great experience. Contrary to what my noble friend Lord True thought there is a history to this, not just from going back as far as Henry VIII. Successive Governments have indulged in this. I appreciate that that does not make it right, but I have done a little research with my team. The Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 and the Greater London Authority Act 1999, just in this area, have powers wider than those in the Bill. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege referred to how important the Localism Act is; I quite agree but there are wider powers in that Act, which was passed under the coalition Government. I appreciate that that does not make it right, but I want to establish the point that a certain degree of consistency would be welcome on these issues.

That said, I am very happy to engage positively in looking at how we move forward on this matter. I very much echo what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said about the way that the Committee has proceeded in a consensual way for the most part. We have not always agreed on issues but we have certainly disagreed agreeably as we have gone through the Bill. I am certainly happy to engage with noble Lords between now and Report in looking at this matter.

We have to keep this in perspective. However, if noble Lords can provide examples of where this provision has been misused in relation to any of that legislation, which, as I say, goes back a considerable way, or examples of where any Government have used it improperly, that would strengthen the case for looking at it further. This measure also does not give the Secretary of State the power that has been suggested; it is subject to an affirmative resolution, which means that it has to be presented to both Houses with a full explanation and carried by both Houses. That said, I understand the points that have been made during the debate. I thank those who have participated: the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, my noble friend Lord True and the noble Lords, Lord Stunell and Lord Shipley, as well as my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who put their names to this measure. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. Given the assurance I have just provided, I ask noble Lords not to press this measure.

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his response and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for his comments. We are trying to get a consensus. During our first debate in Committee, I was described as the hard cop. I really am hard as regards this issue. We have to think very carefully about including a clause such as this. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said that it was simply not justified, that there had been no attempt to justify it and that there was no control over it. He suggested that this clause could enable a future Secretary of State to repeal a whole Act of Parliament in the future. However, I totally endorse what the noble Lord, Lord True, and other noble Lords have said about the integrity of my noble friend the Minister in the Lords.

My noble friend has said that we ought to look at past experience. I am not interested in past experience. I am interested in the future. I am interested in this Bill and what could be done by a Secretary of State who does not have much integrity. Such a Secretary of State could wipe out the whole of this Bill. That is not respectful to Parliament. We are parliamentarians. We shape, discuss and put forward amendments. We agree and we disagree. In the end, we hope that we produce legislation that is good for this country. My noble friend and I had a very brief conversation outside the Grand Committee in which he talked about successive Governments. I say gently that just because a person has a bad habit does not mean that that habit should be condoned. It should be checked and better behaviour should be encouraged. I encourage the Government to mend their errant ways and follow the path of the righteous. To be righteous is to respect Parliament and not introduce these sorts of dangerous clauses. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, used the words “dangerous” and “unjustified”. Nobody has spoken in favour of this clause. When I read in Hansard the words used by judges and learned people who know the whole system and have worked in Parliament with the Constitution Committee and so on, it sends shivers down my back.