Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

I am so pleased that I tempted the noble Lord to intervene at that stage, because I can now tell him that I tried to change the law on that when I was the Minister, and who opposed me? Every blooming local authority—they were the ones who demanded to keep this power and said that it was so important. So I want us to come back to what the Government are asking. This is entirely relevant. I am glad that it is amusing to the noble Lord, but I believe it to be central to the amendment. The Government propose that we give the Secretary of State the power to see whether there are alternative ways in which to handle something that, in the noble Lord’s words, is in many ways bust. That is what he says, but if it is bust, would not it be a good idea to see whether there are ways of unbusting it? This is one of the suggestions.

What do we get? Not a series of suggestions about how we might refine it, improve it, make the tests rather better or come forward with various suggestions about how the various pilots might be carried through. Instead, we get an onslaught on the basis that the only people who can do this are local authorities or public bodies. The Government have produced something which is worth trying. If it does not work, we have not done anything bad. If it does work, we have learned something. The worst thing in politics is to say that we cannot do something because we have not done it before, that we cannot do something because it will not work or that we cannot do something because we do not want to try. This is the moment when we ought to say that we may be a very old House and many of us in it may be very old, but at least we are young enough to recognise that it would be a good thing to have a go at something different.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Deben. He seems to think that the problems that might arise—I think he used the words “might arise”—should not really concern us at this stage. That is what Parliament is about. It is about identifying issues, legislating and, in the event that we foresee problems arising, amending our position to ensure that those problems are avoided.

I want to target a very narrow area. It is the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about the relationship between the planners in the planning authority and the planning contractor in the meeting with councillors. We are told that the proposal is that the contractor will be making the recommendation, but it is unlikely that the planner from the planning authority, who has a relationship with the councillors that probably goes back many years, may not wish to influence events. Whether it is done formally or informally, the planner in the residual planning department might come up with a very different conclusion or recommendation and indicate to the councillors exactly what he or she thinks. That is why I am a little worried about this reference cited by my noble friend on the Front Bench, who said:

“The regulations may make provision about … the investigation of complaints or concerns about designated persons”,

and

“the circumstances in which, and the extent to which, any advice provided by a designated person to a person making a planning application is binding … on the responsible planning authority”.

In other words, can the Secretary of State say, “I require you”—the local authority—“to dismiss any comments, recommendations or views of your own planning department and to accept the views being expressed by the independent contractor”.? I would worry about that because it would completely overturn the principle on which I understand planning operates within local authorities. As I understand it—but it is 40 years since I was on a council—it is normal for the Secretary of State to interfere only on appeal. That provision suggests to me that the Secretary of State can intervene in circumstances which would not be particularly helpful.

I go back to what I said at the beginning of my comments. I am concerned about what happens in the meeting and in the documents that flow between the contractor, the planning officials and the councillors, and about the conflict that might arise. I suggest that that is where the problem will arise and what will sink the whole project.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, and I rise to support these two amendments. They are both based upon advice given to the Government by the Committee on Climate Change. We are talking about a very serious issue. Tens of thousands of houses have been built on flood plains and in circumstances which are more vulnerable than Cockermouth. This is serious. If we go on like this, we will be creating problems which we will have to meet. We cannot avoid it. This is going to happen. Not to do in this Bill what we can do is to avoid an opportunity, to the detriment of very large numbers of people.

The Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change told the Government that there are a number of simple things that should be done that could help protect us in future. For example, water companies are not at the moment compulsory consultees to planning decisions, which means that they are in the very peculiar position of neither being able to comment under the statute on a planning decision, nor being able to refuse to connect the houses then built to an inadequate sewer. We have to put this right. When the committee suggested this to the Government, their official reply was that it would be inappropriate to do this. The word “inappropriate” may have been the right word before the floods in Cumbria, but to suggest that it is inappropriate to do this is stretching the English language beyond any possible appropriate use.

My noble friend may be unable to accept these two amendments at the moment, but it seems to me that it would be pretty impossible to explain to the public that we are prepared to continue with a position in which houses are being built without proper and adequate means of getting rid of the surplus water that they create, and without proper protection of the surplus water that is created outside. These amendments make sure that we have modern, sustainable drainage in a form which this House and the other House have already agreed, and which the Government support. Secondly, they ensure that developers have a duty to develop in a way that makes houses resilient to the normal circumstances of life.

I can think of no more moderate or reasonable amendments to put down, and I remind the Minister that they are based upon the advice of the body that spent a great deal of time researching independently what should be done. Therefore, if she is not able to accept them now, I hope she can give us some hope that between now and Report, the Government will take this opportunity to do two very simple things which will save maybe the lives—and certainly the property and the future—of a large number of people.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I support strongly Amendments 119 and 120, which are important. Before turning to them, I point out that today, we have truncated the last nine groups of amendments to suit the Government’s timetable agenda. Some of us had to concede that because we wanted to ensure that we had two opportunities to debate these amendments, in Committee and on Report; under the proposal made by the Patronage Secretary, that was not precisely the case.

For those Members of the House who have not been following our proceedings and have wondered what was happening this evening—and there will be those who have not—the central issue in this whole Bill has been the fact that it is a skeleton Bill. We have not been able to discuss all the controversial provisions because they are to be introduced later, after Royal Assent, in the form of statutory instruments which we cannot amend. That is the fundamental objection here. That is why all these arguments have taken place.

Amendment 120 would offer at least some security for prospective purchasers of housing. In the event of flooding, at least on the first occasion, the cost of dealing with a property that had been flooded would fall on the developer, not the insurer. Of course, the amendment does not deal with what subsequently happens, when the insurer would carry the liability; but under it, a developer would have to have in mind the potential cost to themselves of failing to design the property they were constructing to deal with the potential for flooding.

I hope this amendment will be enshrined in law, because it seems to me eminently sensible. It contains the phrase:

“the housing developer to be liable for the full cost of flood damage to a new dwelling if such damage occurs within ten years of the property being first sold”.

Of course, the developer can go bankrupt—and then where is the liability? Who then is responsible for paying the bill? In the event that this were enshrined in law, provision would surely have to be made for the developer to buy insurance to cover the possibility of flooding happening at some stage. I presume that the credit rating of the developer would influence the amount of premium payable on the insurance policy.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Campbell-Savours

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I want to intervene very briefly. In the old days—certainly when the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was a Minister in the Department of the Environment, if I remember rightly—in the Lake District we had what were called Section 52 agreements, whereby the planning authority placed a requirement on planning permission that people had to live within either a parish or some other defined area. In so far as Amendment 50A deals with,

“affordable homes to meet local needs, including those for rent”,

surely locals-only agreements could apply in the case of starter homes in small rural communities. Rather than planning authorities simply saying, “We will not have them. We will exclude them in particular areas”, could they not exist within those areas but subject to locals-only agreements?

[Lord Deben]

They certainly could; the noble Lord is absolutely right. But they would have to exist in a way which meant that they were not lost when the next tenant comes forward. You would have to have them in perpetuity as well. As long as that is the case, I do not mind two hoots.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If I remember rightly, under Section 52 agreements, that was precisely the case: the permission attached to the property was carried forward to subsequent buyers. In this mix of debate whereby it is being suggested that we should be more careful about their inclusion in these rural communities, if you have that kind of restriction in place, I cannot see that there is such a great problem.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a perfect description of the kinds of people we are dealing with. It will emphasise in the public mind exactly what is going on in the area of housing rental, and I hope that the Government will not give way on this amendment.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I am so pleased to be on the same side as the noble Lord who has just spoken. It seems a frightfully good word, it says exactly what we mean and it would be very nice if more of our legislation used language which we understood. “Rogue landlord” is a very good phrase to use because it is very important to underline how disgraceful some people are in their treatment of other people in this crucial part of their lives. My only objection is that the word is not used more frequently within the Bill, because there are several references within it where a reminder that this is a rogue-like activity is very necessary.

My only other objection is that “rogue” has a certain rather light touch—it is not as nasty as a number of other words that were used. Perhaps if we had to change it, we could go through the list that the noble Lord has put forward and choose something that is thoroughly more unpleasant than the word “rogue”. However, I cannot imagine why anybody should start this very serious debate off with a discussion about the word “rogue”. This is one of the best things in the Bill. I may have to draw my noble friend’s attention to a number of other things later on as requiring significant amendment, and many things are left out of the Bill that I would like to see put in, but the one thing I certainly would not like to see left out is the word “rogue”.