Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Andrews

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

I do not think that anyone would accuse me of not being committed to sustainable development. Indeed, I declare my interest in helping others throughout the world to promote this issue. However, I have a warning about this amendment. We are trying to change the planning system in order to achieve a number of ends including ensuring that Britain is able to grow in a sustainable way and that the time taken by the process should not be such that we avoid all those good ends. I started being concerned about a detailed definition of this sort when I realised how many people will use it to take the courts into consideration. I hope that the Government will recognise that there are two elements to this: there is the natural desire of those of us who are concerned with sustainable development to ensure that no future Government with less concern should be able to use this Act to avoid some of the necessary decisions which we are making while on the other hand not wanting a definition that brings sustainable development into disrepute because it is used as the mechanism for yet again holding up decisions. I hope that the Government, in considering this amendment whose spirit I wholly support, will think hard about how we do this in a way that does not open this whole thing up to a kind of justiciable approach where every person desiring development will be able to find something here which they can use to try to overturn what a local authority has done.

Secondly, I am concerned about the definition. I know it draws from all sorts of learned and worthy bodies, but the truth is that sustainable development is two words: “sustainable”, and “development”. An awful lot of green people talk about sustainability as if development is not in it, and a lot of people who are keen on development talk as if it does not have sustainability in it. It is necessary to stick these two together. If you read this definition, there is a great deal about sustainability, but I am not sure that there is a tremendous amount about development. Yet my noble friend Lord Jenkin, who taught me these things when I was his PPS, is absolutely right to say that these two things come together. They either fuse together, or neither is able to operate on the other side. I hope that in consideration we will take that into account as well.

The third thing we have to take into account is something very fundamental. It is that we ought to move to a stage in which you do not need both words. We ought to move to a stage in which the very word “development” inevitably means that you are going to develop in a sustainable way. Here I have to say something a bit hard about the Government. It does not help when the Government say things for convenience which suggest that they do not have their heart where it ought to be. It does not help when the Chancellor of the Exchequer suggests that we are going to move at a slower speed in dealing with our emissions than the law says we have to and proposes something illegal. It does not help us when those things happen because then others can doubt our fundamental support for these beliefs.

I say to the Minister that it is crucial that we go further than we have gone so far in making sure that people understand that we mean business. The first Prime Minister to use the words “sustainable development” was John Major. I know that because I wrote that bit of the speech but, in the end, people do not give speeches unless they are happy about them—at least, if they have anything about them. He used those words because he believed fundamentally—this has to be said—that it is in the nature of conservatism that we develop sustainability. That is what the country party, on which we are based, had as its heart. We conserved; we believed in handing on to the next generation something better than we received from the previous one. There is much in this Bill which will help us to do that. We need the speed to do it, but we also need the clarity to ensure that people do not fail to recognise the two elements of sustainability and development until it becomes so much second nature that we need only one word because it means both because we have redefined it properly.

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, there is much that the noble Lord has said with which I agree. I must put on my English Heritage hat and declare an interest. One of the disappointments that we have tried to address in this Bill is the need to get greater clarity about the nature of sustainability. While I see the point that the noble Lord is making, that sustainability and development are two words, it is sustainability that raises greater confusion and there has been a marked lack of clarity about the whole notion. The debate that we have seen in recent weeks about the nature of sustainability in relation to development has exemplified the search for general agreement about the content of sustainability.

It is difficult because there are competing definitions, but I support the noble Lord’s amendment. I spoke at some length in Committee about this and will not repeat it, but we have inclusivity in this definition, in terms of the lifetime issue of how we must address sustainable developments in future. It also specifies content and that gets us a long way down the track. It is also a definition that is fairly familiar, so we might be able to get some agreement on it. Whether it is workable, practicable and applicable raises enormous questions about the way that the planning system operates.

I also have a great deal of sympathy with what the right reverend Prelate has said about what else might go into a definition of sustainability. I may be drifting into the danger of a list, but I feel strongly that one of the elements that is not in this amendment—and the Minister might take this away and consider it—is including something about our vital cultural and heritage needs, including those of future generations. That is an important guiding principle for what we mean by sustainability in many different ways. It would also fit alongside this expression of a strong, healthy and just society.

I do not want to draft an amendment on my feet, but one might add, for example, “meeting the diverse social, cultural, heritage needs of all people in existing and future communities and promoting well-being and social cohesion and inclusion”. This is important, because if we are to take this definition of sustainability seriously, this is a moment when we might be able to agree and implement something. It has been debated for goodness knows how long in this Chamber and I believe that our culture and heritage fit this Bill. They feed our sense of belonging, of pride, identity and resilience and they feed into our roots of personal and community life. They express, as the right reverend Prelate said, our sense of community. They help us to know who we are and what we are capable of. All that is about sustainability for future generations, for the future shape and feel of our country.

I hope that, if we are to debate the amendment—and maybe I should bring it back at a further stage—the Minister will consider whether she can be flexible in her approach to it and maybe include the new elements of the definition.