Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Bill Esterson and Hilary Benn

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I say to the hon. Lady that it is not ridiculous; it is what clause 1 says. If she has not read the clause, I suggest that she does so carefully. On housing targets, the truth is that under the new arrangements the figures that local authorities will have to come up with for housing numbers in their area will not be very different from the figures produced by the regional spatial strategy, because there is still the same housing need. That is certainly the case for the authority in Leeds, because I have spoken to the chief planning officer about that.

The truth is that if hon. Members read the Bill, they will see that the Secretary of State will decide which authorities will lose the right to decide applications for themselves, he will decide what kinds of applications will come to him for decision, and he alone will take the decision in the place of local councillors. Of course, there will be no right of appeal—something the Bill also states.

I want to turn, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) invited me to a moment ago, to the grounds on which the Secretary of State may designate authorities. Clearly, he has made up his mind; he is just not telling us how he has done it. The clause gives him the power to do that anywhere, on any basis, for as many authorities as he likes, and there will be no check or balance from anybody else.

As for the criteria, when the Minister with responsibility for planning appeared before the Select Committee he said that speed and poor quality measured by decisions overturned by the Planning Inspectorate would be the factors that Ministers would take into account. On speed, I am genuinely puzzled. First, councils currently decide 82% of applications within eight weeks and 93% within 13 weeks. Those are the facts. The percentage of applications approved reached a 10-year high in 2011-12. Secondly, developers can already appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on grounds of non-determination in the required time under section 78(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. What does the Bill add to that power? Thirdly, there is a practical problem, as the planning Minister had to admit. He said that there was a wrinkle in the statistics. The data on timeliness do not take account of planning performance agreements. As hon. Members will know, that is where developers and councils jointly reach agreement to say, “Hey, this development could take a bit more time to approve. Can we agree, in effect, to set aside the time limits?” Instead of there being a simple measure, the Secretary of State will have to decide whether he thinks the reason given by an authority, when decisions are apparently slow, is good enough to justify his not taking the power away from them.

[Bill Esterson]

In an intervention a few minutes ago, the Secretary of State said that he would be working with the Local Government Association. Of course, the LGA has said that the barriers to growth are nothing to do with the planning system. Does my right hon. Friend intend to come on to that point—I am sure he does—and comment on the fact that it is the lack of funding that is the problem, not the planning system?

Local Government Finance

Debate between Bill Esterson and Hilary Benn

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend makes that point very forcefully. I wonder whether Hammersmith and Fulham will still be the Secretary of State’s favourite council once he becomes aware of what it has been doing, in marked contrast to what the Prime Minister of the party it supports said at the time of the election—but then that is sadly familiar, too.

We cannot get much more front line than making sure old people have a hot meal every day or get their shopping done, or helping people to remain in their own home by building a ramp or putting a shower on the ground floor, so whatever the Minister of State was thinking when he answered an earlier question, or whatever the Secretary of State was thinking in December when he described the draft settlement as

“enough to safeguard the most vulnerable, protect taxpayers’ interests and the front-line services they rely on”,

I would gently say to them that they must recognise the damage that such comments do to the credibility of DCLG Ministers. Every time they say such things councillors, officers and people in local communities look at each other and ask, “Don’t they have any idea of what is actually going on in the world we have to live in?”

[Bill Esterson]

My right hon. Friend talks about the damage being done and the reality on the ground, and that is precisely what my constituents are concerned about. They are concerned about the damage to services that my right hon. Friend has described. All that he has said is true in Sefton, which faces a 25% cut, in common with many other metropolitan boroughs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson]

I thank the Minister for that correction. Sefton also faces the impact of the associated job losses on local businesses that rely on the public sector, as well as the impact of the localisation of business rates. The local economy will suffer greatly as a result of the money taken out of it due to the local government cuts. Businesses will not be in a position to expand. They will also be contracting, and the council will not be able to take advantage of the changes in business rates. That will be disastrous for everybody in Sefton.

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point about the impact of all this on the overall economy, and I shall say a few words about the effect on jobs shortly.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports on another area that has been affected. It says that significant reductions in expenditure on planning and economic development are being seen. Councils will need as much resource as possible to respond to the national planning policy framework, and in particular to draw up their new plans if they have not got them, or to revise the plans if they have got them, because if they do not do that, developers can come in and say, “We want to make use of the presumption in favour of sustainable development.” However, they will find that the resource they need to do that work will largely have disappeared.

I am reluctant to raise this point, but I shall: it is extraordinary that although the Minister stands up and says, “Money’s very tight,” his Secretary of State has found £0.25 billion to try to persuade councils to change their minds about how to collect their rubbish. The great localist thinks he knows better than they do how it should be done, even though household recycling rates have more than doubled since 1997, thus saving residents a lot of money in landfill levy, and the majority of councils whose minds he is trying to change with his cash are controlled by councillors from his own party. It is a very expensive family disagreement.

National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Bill Esterson and Hilary Benn

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. There are those who think that neighbourhood planning will give them the opportunity to reduce the number of houses planned for the areas in which they live—this takes us back to the point made by the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry)—but I understand from the NPPF that it is a one-way lock. A neighbourhood plan cannot say, “We would like to have fewer houses than proposed by the local plan”; it can only say, “We would like to have more houses”. People who have seen neighbourhood planning as a potential way of doing what the hon. Lady wants to be done will find themselves rather disappointed.

Under the current system—I want to recognise its strengths—councils have granted developers planning permission for 300,000 new homes that have not yet been built. Why have they not been built? It is clearly not the fault of the planning system, which has done its bit. What are the Government doing about the fact that the number of new homes built in England in the first year under the coalition was the lowest for at least 20 years, and about the fact that plans for 200,000 new homes have been abandoned since their election because of the chaos and uncertainty created by their planning proposals? That is but one example of the way in which the Government’s draft framework is leading to confusion.

The Government hope that planning reform will help growth to get going again, and we all want that. However, their actions in rushing reform in a way that has lost people’s confidence and hurrying to try to abolish the regional spatial strategies have led to uncertainty among planners, councils, developers and the courts. As a result, the system may slow down while everyone works out what the new words mean.

[Bill Esterson]

I am sure my right hon. Friend agrees that retaining the “brownfield first” policy, under which the proportion of property built on brownfield increased between 1989 and 2010, is the answer to many of the current problems. It would, for instance, solve the problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), whether it applied to green belt or greenfield. Does he think that one of the reasons for its absence is the attachment of developers— who, in my constituency, have been buying up land in both green belt and greenfield—to the Conservative party?

[Hilary Benn]

The developers must speak for themselves, but I cannot understand why the Government have abandoned what was a very successful “brownfield first” policy. The fact that they have done so has raised public concerns.

Public confidence is very important. We all accept that the planning system needs public support in order to work. Let me say, with all respect, that describing those who have expressed genuine concerns about the draft NPPF, including such well-known revolutionaries and radicals as the National Trust—I suppose that I should declare my membership of that radical and revolutionary organisation, as should other right hon. and hon. Members—as “semi-hysterical”, “left wing” and guilty of “nihilistic selfishness” was a profound mistake on the part of Ministers. Even worse was the accusation that the criticism was

“a carefully choreographed smear campaign”.

What were Ministers thinking of? Is it because they are so out of touch that, instead of listening and responding to what people were saying—as, in fairness, the Minister has today—they chose initially to attack while bulldozing onwards? That is the very opposite of what the public expect in the way of balanced discussion and proper consultation.

Nor, as the Minister knows, are the accusations true. For example, both the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England have supported housing development, in some cases on greenfield land, because they thought that it was the right thing to do. This is not about people who want no development at all; it is about the Government’s recognition that the way in which they approached the matter at the outset was a mistake. We need only look at the size of the petitions that have been received to see the extent of the concern that is felt. It is fair to say that recently, including today, we have observed a more emollient tone, and I for one welcome that; but it is not before time.

It is clear that, having gone about this in the wrong way to start with, the Government will have to make some big changes in the right direction. Paragraph 14 of the NPPF contains the

“presumption in favour of sustainable development”

that was originally announced in the Chancellor's “The Plan for Growth” in March, which also used a phrase—

“the default answer to development is ‘yes’”

—that is repeated in paragraph 19 of the NPPF. That has created a lot of anxiety, because it suggests decision-making that is automatic rather than considered and because, in the words of the National Trust, it constructs “a fundamentally unbalanced system”.