Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsMonday 27th March 2023
(1 year, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-VIII Eighth Marshalled list for Committee - (23 Mar 2023)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that, if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 186, 187 and 187A because of pre-emption.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 186 and 187B in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. When we concluded the debate last Wednesday, my noble friend the Minister explained the Government’s reason for the introduction of the national development management policies. I reiterate to my noble friend that I very much welcome and anticipate a further response to clarify how the NPPF and NDMP relate to one another, perhaps by particular reference to the example of the chapter on green-belt policies.
If I can paraphrase, my noble friend said that a key reason was to make local plans more local. She said that, when making a determination of a planning application, the local plan policies will “sit alongside” the national development policies. But what if they are not consistent? This group of amendments looks at that question. The present position is that applications for planning permission must be made in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Clause 86 of the Bill inserts
“and any national development management policies.”
Therefore, applications must be made in accordance with the development plan and any national development management policies. The material considerations would need to “strongly indicate otherwise”. We argued that point last Wednesday.
Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that, if a policy
“in a development plan … conflicts with another policy in the development plan the conflict must be resolved in favour of the policy which is contained in the last document”—
so it is simply a matter of which is the most recent. In future, that conflict may be between a development plan and the national development management policies. The Government, to resolve that question, state in Clause 86(2):
“If to any extent the development plan conflicts with a national development management policy, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the national development management policy.”
We have heard from the noble Baroness moving Amendment 185A that it proposes that proposed new subsection (5C) created by Clause 86(2) be deleted. Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would give precedence to the development plan. This turns the Government’s intention on its head. However, I have to say that it runs a serious risk of undermining national policies by virtue of local plan-making and turning the whole problem the other way around.
My Amendment 186, tabled with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, would add the word “significant” to make the phrase, “if to any significant extent” there is a conflict. That would have the simple benefit of avoiding the disapplication of development plan policies because of an insignificant difference between that and an NDMP. It would run the risk—I have to acknowledge—of debate over what “significant” means. However, if the Minister were to object to the insertion of the word “significant” because of the risk of litigation, I will return to the question of the litigation that might arise through the insertion of the word “strongly”, which the Government resisted on those grounds.
Amendment 187, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would reverse the primacy of NDMP over the development plan where there is a substantial set of devolved responsibilities given to a combined county authority. These are, in effect, the planning powers of the constituent local planning authorities, so I have to confess that I am not at all clear why, if the powers are vested in a CCA, as opposed to a local planning authority, the primacy should be switched simply on those grounds.
Overall, we have a group of amendments here that illustrate the problem but do not offer a solution. The development plan should not be inconsistent with the NDMP. The new Section 15C of PCPA 2004, to be inserted by Schedule 7, states this. On page 294 of the Bill, it can be seen that the intention of the Government is that there should not be any inconsistency between the two. However, in practice, such inconsistencies will arise in relation to specific planning applications. That is where the problem emerges. When they do, as the Minister herself made clear, this is a plan-led system, and a decision should, so far as possible, be made in accordance with the development plan. As the NPPF makes clear, where there is no relevant plan policy or no up-to-date plan—our Amendments 187A and 187B are relevant here about the necessity of an up-to-date plan—then the decision should be made by reference to the national development management policies, which will continue to be given statutory weight, by virtue of this legislation, even if the plan is out of date.
Therefore, I ask the Minister to reflect on this question and whether the primacy of the national development management policies should be achieved through the plan-making process—that is, sustain that question of there being no inconsistencies—but also where no up-to-date plan applies. However, if there is an up-to-date plan, then that should be the basis of the decision. That would retain the principle that those seeking planning permission should do so in accordance with an up-to-date local plan. I hope that the Minister will consider whether, when we come back to this on Report, that might be the basis for amending the Bill.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 187, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has attached her name. She is mostly handling the planning parts of this Bill, but she is otherwise engaged at this moment. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made a very interesting speech. It comes down to the question of what we mean by “inconsistency”. Do we mean that the local plan is trying to set higher standards than the national guidelines? If that is so, what we should have are national plans that set minimum standards. It should be within the power of local authorities to set higher standards if they so desire and if they think those are appropriate or necessary for the local area.
The noble Lord asked why this should apply particularly to CCAs, given that they are essentially a compilation of existing powers. The situation is that, where you have a CCA that has been created and handed the highways, environmental and other powers, certainly in local perception, in the understanding of people who have elected people on to those local bodies, the power that has been handed to this local body should rest in that local body.
Here, we have to look at the context of what it is like on the ground. I spent the weekend visiting various local areas outside London and hearing lots of complaints about local councillors’ lack of power to do what local residents want them to do. National planning rules have become far too bloated, and local councillors simply do not have the power to shape what happens in their local community in the way that residents expect them to. For example, people are surprised at how little power councils can have over the types of business established on a local high street. Massive international chains such as Starbucks can undermine the character and charm of a local scene, and the local planning authority and councillors are left wrestling over how the signage looks—which is not the issue that local people are most concerned about. There are more than 550 Green councillors around the country now, and this probably gets to the heart of what I hear from them so often: expressions of frustration at how power is centralised here in Westminster.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, I begin by addressing Amendments 185A and 192 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor of Stevenage and Lady Hayman of Ullock, which seek to remove or reverse the precedence given to national development management policies over the development plan in planning decisions where there is a conflict between them. I welcome this further opportunity to explain the objectives behind this aspect of the Bill.
As I indicated in our debate on this issue last week, national development management policies are intended to bring greater clarity to the important role that national policy already plays in decisions on planning applications. A clear and concise set of policies with statutory weight will make sure that important safeguards, such as protections for designated landscapes and heritage assets, are taken fully into account, without these basic matters having to be repeated in local plans to give them the statutory recognition they deserve.
These amendments deal specifically with what to do in the event that there is a conflict between national development management policies and the development plan when a planning decision must be made in accordance with both. The amendments would remove the certainty created by the Bill that up-to-date national policies on important issues, such as climate change or flood protection, would have precedence over plans that may well have been made a long time ago.
Some local plans are woefully out of date; for example, some date back to the 1990s. Only around 40% of local planning authorities adopted a local plan within the last five years. It would, in our view, be wrong to say that, in the event of a conflict, national policy does not take precedence over out-of-date policies in these plans, which is what these amendments would achieve. This point is particularly crucial because we wish to use national policies to drive higher standards, especially on good design, the environment and tackling climate change, and it is important that these take precedence in the event of a conflict with out-of-date policies in plans.
Nevertheless, I expect such conflicts to be very limited in future as we are making it easier to produce plans and keep them up to date, and because the Bill makes sure that new plans will be drawn up consistently with national policies, including the new national development management policies. Given the important role that national development management policies will perform and their benefits in providing certainty, I hope noble Lords understand that we are not able to support this amendment. I agree with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham that few, if any, conflicts should arise under this new way of working.
Amendment 186 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley would give national development management policies precedence over the development plan only where there was a “significant” conflict between the relevant policies. Where a local policy and national development management policy are both relevant considerations but not in any conflict, it will still be for the decision-maker to decide how much weight is afforded to these policies based on their relevance to the proposed development. Our clause sets out only what should be done in the event of a conflict between policies where they contradict one another. My noble friend brought up the green belt. Policies controlling development in the green belt are standard nationally and will be set out in the NDMPs. Local plans could—will—define the boundaries of the green belt, as they do now, so I do not think there should be any conflict between those two issues.
We have explained why we believe it is important that NDMPs are prioritised in the event of such a conflict, and we expect such conflicts to be limited, as I have said.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I fear I was not clear enough about what I asked about last week and hoped to hear more about. Chapter 13 of the NPPF describes the green-belt policies. It forms two parts: the first relates to plan-making and the second, from new paragraph 149 onwards, to how these policies should be applied in relation to development in the green belt and the determination of planning applications. My assumption has been—partly answering the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that we do not know what the NDMPs are; this is a good illustration—that the latter will be NDMPs, the former will not. There will continue to be guidance in the NPPF. If I am wrong, I would be glad to be advised; otherwise, it would be helpful to understand how these things divide up.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am sorry. Obviously, I got the issue slightly wrong in the last debate. I thought that we were talking about a conflict between two green-belt policies. I will go back to Hansard. Obviously, my answer is not relevant, therefore, but I will check that out and give my noble friend a proper answer in writing. I think that is the best way to do it, as we got it wrong.
Additionally, the suggested wording of Amendment 186 would also generate uncertainty and associated litigation, because the term “significant” would be open to considerable interpretation. Therefore, as the amendment would cut across the greater certainty which we hope to bring to planning decisions, it is not one that we feel able to accept.
My noble friend Lord Lansley also brought up the decision-making role of the NDMPs being constrained by matters not covered by an up-to-date plan. NDMPs will focus on matters of national importance that have general application. This will enable the local plans to be produced more quickly so that they no longer move to repeat the things that are in the national plans. It is important that there should not be—as there is now—this duplication in plans. I think this makes it simpler and less open to conflict.
Amendment 187 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which relates to higher-tier authorities with planning powers, would give precedence to the development plan over national development management policies, where a mayor or combined authority has strategic planning powers, or where a group of local planning authorities have produced a joint spatial development strategy.
As I have set out, we believe that there are good reasons why, in certain cases, national development management policies may need to take precedence over those in the development plan. National development management policies will underpin, with statutory weight, key national policy protections in cases where plan policies, including spatial development strategies, become out-of-date.
I note that the Secretary of State already has powers to direct amendments that must be made to draft versions of spatial development strategies before they are published, where he thinks it is expedient to do so, to avoid any inconsistency with current national policies. These powers have been used sparingly in the past, although they have been used where important national policies were duplicated but inappropriately amended.
For these reasons, we believe it is right that national development management policies would be able to override the development plan in those cases where it is absolutely necessary, even where there is a strategic plan-making body in place. Thus, this is not an amendment that we feel able to support.
I think I answered my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham in a previous debate, but I will repeat what I said for those Members who were not here last time. Amendment 187B in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham aims to ensure that decisions on planning applications are taken in line with an up-to-date plan, with an up-to-date plan being defined as less than five years old.
As previously mentioned, we know that, for local plans to be effective, they must be kept up to date. Currently, plans must be reviewed to assess whether they need updating at least once every five years and they should then be updated as necessary. We intend to replace this current review requirement, which is a source of confusion and argument. It has been described in this place as a loophole and I have some sympathy for that characterisation.
In the Bill policy paper published last May, we committed to set out a new, clearer requirement in regulations for authorities to commence an update of their local plans every five years. It is, however, important that we do not create a cliff edge in law that forces important aspects of plans to be out of date for decision-making purposes just because they are more than five years old; this would, for example, have the effect of weakening green belt protections very considerably.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt again, but my point relates to having an up-to-date plan. My noble friend has made clear her rather compelling points about the national development management policies taking precedence over an out-of-date plan but, if there is in place an up-to-date plan that works and is both recent and relevant, why should an NDMP seek primacy over an up-to-date local plan?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
What I am trying to explain to noble Lords is that there should be no conflict because they deal with different things. The national development management policies are likely to cover common issues that are already being dealt with in national planning policies, such as the green belt, areas at risk of flooding and heritage areas. They would not impinge on local policies for shaping development, nor would they direct what land should be allocated for a particular area. They are totally different things. Looking to the future, therefore, I cannot see what conflict there would be.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I hope the Lords spiritual will forgive me for borrowing from their script, but I feel like I am in green heaven, because everything I have just been hearing from all sides of the Committee is what I and the Green Party have been banging on about for the last decade and, indeed, much longer. I was looking back at an interview I did with Red Pepper just after I was elected as Green leader in 2012, talking about how people were being left in cold homes, mourning something that has not been mentioned tonight but that we really should talk about: the hideous level of the UK’s excess winter deaths. That picks up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the way our society is going backwards in life expectancy, particularly healthy life expectancy.
Green policy for decades has said that environmental and social justice are indivisible. By environment, we mean the physical built environment as well as the natural environment. So you will not find any Green names on any of these amendments, because we did not need to be there. Nearly all these amendments have full cross-party backing, including from the Conservative Party, and non-party backing—and I join many others in applauding the huge amount of work done by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on the issue of buildings. All this fits together. In Oral Questions earlier today, in a debate about diets, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said that it is not just about diets; it is also about exercise. Well, how about we have homes built with active transport in mind; how about we have walking paths, cycling paths and safe ways to get around?
The noble Lord just referred to access to nature and a children’s right to nature. How about we write that into law and say that every child has that right? The proposals in this amendment point us in that direction and put them, crucially, into the Bill. I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, because so much has been said. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, picked up something I have long been banging on about, and that is security by design. Rather than talking about bobbies on the beat, rather than trying to deal with the problem we have already created, let us build out the problem of neighbourhoods that work for people and that are secure.
I am going to really restrain myself here, because I could just get so excited hearing so many things that I agree with from every side of the Committee, but I will not: I am going to do the classic Green thing and point out some hard truths. One of these is that, while I said this was green heaven, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, put some silver sprinkles on that heaven by bringing up growth. We have had growth for decades; we have chased GDP growth and look where it has got us. Look at the actual fabric of our society, the utter ill health, mental and physical, of our society. I say to both of the largest parties, who are currently waging a political duel about who can offer more growth: let us talk about the healthy society that the amendments here would collectively put together in the Bill.
The other awkward truth is what is behind all this. Who is building these homes that immediately need to be retrofitted to be even basically liveable and healthy? Who is building these homes in places where there is no public transport and no provision for active transport? We have a handful of mass housebuilders who are driven by profit. It is the legal responsibility of the directors to maximise profit, which is why we need these amendments to the Bill. All parts of our society need to see that there are controls on the profit motive, so our society works for people and planet and does not keep being milked for profit at the cost of the rest of us.
We have to have these controls and rules, and these rules have to come from government, and from Parliament if they are not going to come directly from government. I would say that your Lordships’ House has a huge opportunity with this Bill, and not just this Bill: tomorrow, we will be on the Energy Bill; and how about Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, who has a big drive on for solar panels on every suitable new home? Why on earth not? We need to join all this up and make it happen: this is our responsibility to the people of today for the climate, and our responsibility to the people of the future.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I have been listening to an excellent debate, and I just want to say one thing that relates to Amendment 484 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and others. I just hope that, when my noble friend is responding or takes some of these very important points away, he responds not simply to the question of what is required in Building Regulations but what is achievable in terms of the sustainable framework for buildings. I declare a registered interest as counsel to Low Associates, which, between 2018 and 2020 was working with the European Commission on Level(s), which is a European Commission sustainable framework for buildings.
Such certification schemes exist. In this country, we have the Building Research Establishment’s environmental assessment method; the Americans have Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design; in France, they have gone further and legislated in RE 2020. The point I want to make is that, yes, we should focus on what is needed in order to secure an assessment of whole life-cycle carbon emissions in a building, but actually that is not enough, in my view. We should be increasingly looking at greenhouse gas emissions in total, at a circular economy and the reuse and recycling of materials, including in the demolition of buildings or the repurposing of buildings. We should be looking at water use and water resources. And we can put these, as many organisations increasingly do in certification schemes, in formats that are also very relevant to the performance assessment, including the cost assessment, of buildings, for those who have to invest in buildings, and indeed, in the public sector for those whose job it is to procure buildings.
We have structures that are available. We can see both voluntary schemes and—in the case of France and one or two others—legislative schemes that can focus on the broader environmental, health-related and social objectives of our buildings. These schemes recognise that, across Europe, 36% of greenhouse gas emissions are derived from our building stock. We have to deal with this; it is a central part of our environmental objectives. I hope Ministers are looking at both the statutory minimum requirements and a certification process that encourages the whole industry to move to a higher level of performance.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, yesterday I had the privilege of walking along a body of water called Frenchman’s Creek, which—some noble Lords may know—was made famous by the novel of Daphne du Maurier. I was walking through what is one of the remains of the UK’s temperate rainforest. I was in a green space, and I was next to a blue space, which fed out into the Helford River, which went out into the channel. You could see the ocean beyond that. That is why I support Amendment 241, in particular. This amendment is all about giving everybody access to those green and blue spaces, which is a privilege I have, living in the far south-west of this nation. I was walking, but I might have been running or cycling, although I do not think I would have been wheeling. All those types of exercise are absolutely vital to everybody.
To me, the theme of this debate has been that if we really want to level up, as my noble friend Lord Stunell mentioned, health and life expectancy are fundamental to that. That is why I support Amendment 241 and many others here as well. I hope that the Government will be able to positively respond to that.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendments 200 and 205 which are tabled in my name. I will also talk about one or two other amendments in this group, which were very helpfully introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, who set out not only the purposes of her amendments but gave a very straightforward description of all the other amendments. I am most grateful for that.
As noble Lords will have heard, Amendment 200 would enable a joint spatial development strategy to
“specify or describe employment sites the provision of which the participating authorities consider to be of strategic importance to the joint strategy area”.
The reason for this is that at this point in Schedule 7 there is reference to infrastructure that is relevant to the joint strategy area as a whole, not just to one participating authority. There is then a reference to affordable housing. I am not quite sure where that came from, since it is not obviously the case that affordable housing necessarily has implications of strategic importance beyond the participating authority in which the affordable housing is to be provided, but leave that on one side.
If one is to identify and specify in this part of Schedule 7, which is about making a spatial development strategy and looking at what is of strategic importance, it seems fairly obvious that employment sites—which, by their nature, will be the large employment sites—absolutely give rise to a need for them to be identified in a joint spatial development strategy. That links directly to the question of infrastructure and, in due course, to housing need. The infrastructure point is where the SDS really comes from. The SDS is about enabling that strategic planning to be achieved.
On a later group I will reiterate a broad point, which I will return to on a number of occasions in our debates, which is that, if we do nothing else, I hope we can identify and move towards opportunities for the planning processes to be co-ordinated, not just land use planning but transport planning, utilities planning, power supply and water supply. These all need to be properly integrated to have the best overall effect.
How is this to be achieved? I should remind noble Lords again that I chair the Cambridgeshire Development Forum; that is a registered interest of mine. Back at the beginning of the year, we had a very good presentation by Graham Pointer from WSP, who worked on the integrated planning processes in New South Wales. The essence of it was very straightforward: integrated planning of land use, transport, power, water and the environment and ensuring that these plans were then able to be funded together. We are not going to get into the funding mechanisms, but we can certainly ensure that there are integrated plans, ideally on integrated timetables.
One would imagine that this is very straightforward and it should be possible to make it happen. It almost never happens in the places I go to. There are constantly different tiers of administration in local areas that are conducting different aspects of planning at different times and with different parameters. We really need to try to integrate planning. If my noble friends on the Front Bench can push that forward, using spatial development strategies, that would be really useful. At the Westminster Social Policy Forum, I chaired a discussion on the OxCam corridor the Friday before last. It was one of the strongest messages to come out. Here is a key economic area. On travel to work areas, as a consequence of, for example, the east-west rail development, those areas may well be extended, so that the travel to work area for Cambridge extends potentially to new sites and settlements in Bedfordshire, and the travel to work area for Oxford and Harwell might well extend increasingly to settlements in and around Milton Keynes.
Increasingly, we have different authorities in different counties whose planning processes need to be co-ordinated and integrated together. Spatial development strategies are a way of doing that. I am old enough to remember when we had the Standing Conference of East Anglian Local Authorities and we used to do planning processes through regional mechanisms. We do not have regional planning now but that does not mean that we need to abandon the concept of strategic planning. Strategy does not require us to have integrated and large-scale authorities; it just means that the authorities need to come together.
Amendment 200 is specifically about employment sites, because of their relative strategic importance to an area or combined areas. Amendment 205 is about bringing additional authorities with a role to play into the process. I am grateful to the County Councils Network for its assistance in shaping an amendment for this purpose. I added the reference to travel to work areas, so I am particularly pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, commended that it should extend specifically to those authorities within a travel to work area, even if they are not one of the participating authorities. That is why we want to focus particularly on district councils, which may not join in the SDS but need to be consulted in the process. Also, counties and county combined authorities should be included in the consultation.
This engagement and consultation is in relation to their functions but it does not make them participants in the spatial development strategy itself. It does not give them a veto over the spatial development strategy but is confined to their bringing to the party the things that they can do. Given that for counties it includes something as integral as transport planning, this is fundamental to a spatial development strategy being able to work effectively. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for signing that amendment. I confess that I cannot see that we can put counties into the spatial development strategies as such, because of the difficulties of their not having planning powers—this is a combination of those that do have the planning powers—but it is absolutely right that they should be involved.
Apart from my own amendments, I want to say a word about Amendment 199. When I read it, I asked myself why the combined authorities are not part of this. The only reason I can think of is that they already have a non-statutory spatial strategy power. Frankly, I think that should come to the party. If noble Lords have a moment, I suggest they look at pages 288 and 299 of the Bill, and the new subsections at 15AI to be inserted. This is about what happens when a combined authority is created, and where these areas are already engaged in a joint spatial development strategy. It is awful. Basically, it collapses and it is cancelled; it is all withdrawn. That is the last thing you want. Where participating authorities are working together on a spatial development strategy, the creation of a combined authority should supplement that and enable them to accomplish it more effectively, not cause it all to be withdrawn or cancelled. The language is terrible, but the intention seems to me to be wrong too. I would much rather combined authorities joined in.
In the Cambridge area, we have the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. The need for planning in that key economic hub extends out from Cambridge to Royston in Hertfordshire, to Haverhill in Suffolk, to Thetford in Norfolk, and to Bedford and Cranfield. It is obviously a candidate that is not only economically important but requires the joint working of local authorities and integrated planning across a wider region. It seems to me that spatial development strategies are a good thing, designed to enable that to happen, but we need the legislation to be more permissive. I would particularly focus on Amendment 205. I hope my noble friend will indicate that Ministers are sympathetic to the ability of counties, and other county combined authorities, to get involved in this way.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow 11 minutes of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explaining the amendments. I have tabled amendments in this group and supported others because of the potential importance of strategic planning in tackling the climate emergency. We need to embed it in everything that councils do, alongside solving the acute housing crisis in this country.
Mine are probing amendments to find out how the Government see the role of county councils within the production of a joint spatial development strategy. County councils sit one tier above planning authorities, but many have strategic functions—for example, transport, health, social care or education. It seems slightly odd that they do not have a planning role as well.
Schedule 7 as currently drafted would need participating planning authorities to consult the county council once a draft strategy has been produced. It seems to me that this perhaps misses the opportunity to involve county councils actively in the development of the strategy, which I think they could very much contribute to. Taken to its highest level, the county council could even initiate the process and convene the planning authorities to work together. It seems to me that that is likely to happen anyway.
I would like to know the Minister’s thinking on how the Government see the role of county councils in strategic planning and whether they might explore the opportunity of more fully involving counties in spatial development plans.
For most Bills, the more I get involved the more fascinating they become. This Bill is an example of that not working at all. I am finding it incredibly difficult, and I sympathise with the Minister dealing with it. It is very difficult to find a coherent thread through this whole Bill. I applaud her and the Labour Front Bench for toughing it out.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, how do I follow that? I will not, as it is dangerous territory.
This is a very interesting and important debate because it is about creating part of the hierarchy of a plan-led process. At the moment, we have quite a mixed pattern across England. Obviously, London has the ability to make a spatial strategy policy and plan; so do just some of the metro combined authorities, as they are known. In 2018, there was a statutory instrument which enabled three combined authorities to create spatial strategic plans: they were Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and the West of England. The others do not. Why not?
Here is an opportunity to create a more coherent approach to spatial development strategies across the country. I am speaking as someone living in a metro area, in West Yorkshire. It does not have the ability to make a spatial development plan but is getting round it by creating lots of plans which it hopes will be adopted by the constituent authorities so that it, in essence, has one. That is not satisfactory because what is needed is an overarching approach that all the constituent authorities can agree on. At the minute, it is a series of plans for different elements—for example, flooding, transport or economic development.
It is not just the county areas which are being omitted from a coherent approach. I hope that, given this debate, the Minister will be able to give us some hope that there will be a bit more coherence attached to this for all the metro mayors and—as has quite rightly been argued—for the counties. It is a nonsense otherwise. I do not know how you can plan, certainly for economic development and transport infrastructure, unless you have an overall approach which a spatial development strategy would enable.
I was very taken with what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said about thinking about which elements we would want included in a spatial development strategy. He quite rightly included economic development in Amendment 200. I do not know how you could have a spatial development strategy without thinking about economic development and setting aside sites for business development. That must be included.
Having said that, you need to include transport infrastructure. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, climate change must be a part of that as well. Alongside that, if you have housing sites and a broad approach to spatial development and business development, you need to think about public service facilities. At the moment, even in a big metro area such as where I am, these are often so piecemeal, and it is so frustrating. Why can we not have people think about what you need for schools, hospitals, and local general practices, for instance? What about thinking about provision for nature, which was the subject of the first group of amendments this afternoon on local nature recovery plans? That ought to be integrated into an approach to spatial development, as well as leisure facilities. All that needs to be there.
I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, who talked about using travel to work areas as the boundary. That makes it extraordinarily difficult if those are not coterminous with the local authority boundaries which are being used. I will give noble Lords an example from my own experience. Travel to work areas in West Yorkshire include York, Barnsley in South Yorkshire and even Doncaster. People from Manchester come and work in West Yorkshire and Leeds and vice versa.
One of the challenges for the Minister is to try to come up with an answer to what boundaries are used because Schedule 7 talks, quite rightly, about the constituent authorities and members of a combined authority, a combined county authority or even—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben—just a county council. You need to know what boundaries you are using.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt, but I think it is actually a bit simpler than that. The participating authorities that choose to be in the spatial development strategy choose to be in it and bring their territory with them. Everybody else, from my point of view in Amendment 205, are other authorities that are consulted. They are not making the strategy, they are consulted about it, so their geography does not matter so much.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I do not think that there is a distinction. They can be, and will be, part of it. I am sure that they will be part of whether that particular geographic area or group of councils will decide to go to a spatial strategy in the first place—that is how local government works. But I will give it some more thought; I am sure that we will come back to the issue on Report.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Before my noble friend moves on from this point about counties, can she confirm whether, when she says that they are a statutory consultee, she is referring to new Section 15A), to be inserted by Schedule 7, where they are consulted after the preparation of a draft, which is then deposited with various people? That is substantively different from securing the advice and participation of counties, related districts and others in the preparation of that draft spatial development strategy.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I will take the point back and consider it further, because some important issues have been brought up. I will make sure that, having given it some thought, we will discuss it further before Report.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will contribute to this group in relation to the two amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. In existing legislation, Section 19(1B) and (1C) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that:
“Each local planning authority must identify the strategic priorities for the development and use of land in the authority’s area… Policies to address those priorities must be set out in the local planning authority’s development plan documents (taken as a whole).”
Therefore, the legislation has it that strategic priorities must be set out and policies must be set out to meet them.
Paragraph 21 of the National Planning Policy Framework in the consultation document recently issued says that:
“Plans should make explicit which policies are strategic policies. These should be limited to those necessary to address the strategic priorities of the area”.
Paragraph 17 states that the development plan
“must include strategic policies to address each local planning authority’s priorities for the development and use of land in its area.”
Therefore, the legislation is carried through into the National Planning Policy Framework. Also, the NPPF is clear that there is an important distinction to be made between strategic and non-strategic policies. I will not dwell on those now, as it is not relevant for this purpose. Suffice to say that “strategic” in front of policies seems important.
However, the Government have decided to omit “strategic”, to omit any reference to strategic priorities or a requirement that the local plan in a plan-making process should identify those priorities and show how policies meet them. I cannot for the life of me understand why. I admit that these are probing amendments to find out why. I do not think that, as a proposition, the structure of the NPPF in paragraphs 17 and 21 should be left stranded, with the relevant legislative provisions in Section 19 of the 2004 Act being omitted and not being substituted with anything in the current legislation that gives rise to that part of the NPPF.
The Government may say, “Well, it’s guidance and that’s fine—that’s what we’re saying”. Until now it has been perfectly understood that there is a legislative structure, and that the guidance follows it. I am not sure that we should arrive at a position where there is guidance with no legislative structure underpinning it. I cannot see any mischief in putting the strategic priorities and strategic policies back in. I see no mischief in putting “strategic” in front of “policies”. It avoids any lack of clarity about what kind of policies we are talking about. I cannot see why the Bill should not be amended to put it in line with where the current situation is and where the NPPF intends to go.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I briefly follow-up on that question which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has left hanging.
We seem to have several moving parts here. I do not want to detain anybody any longer than necessary. We have the guidance of the NPPF, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has outlined its current impact on how local plans are developed. We now have the statutory NDMPs. Eventually we will get used to that acronym, I guess. Earlier this evening, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, told noble Lords that she thought that the occasions of conflict between the NDMPs and local plans would be very rare, so rare that they did not need referencing but, on the other hand, possibly so onerous that it would be burdensome to make every one be referred back to your Lordships.
However, the political context of the NDMPs is of trying to retrieve a situation that was created last year by multiple changes in direction within the department, and by Ministers, about what they wanted local plans to achieve. Do they want them to achieve a very large number of houses, no houses at all, or as many houses as the local area thinks are appropriate?
All that will be resolved when—eventually—the NDMPs are published, because that is when we will be told what the Government intend local plans to produce. At that point it seems foreseeable—I say only foreseeable, not certain—that there will be areas of conflict between the citizens’ assemblies brought forward by the noble Baroness’s amendment and the common consultation process that we have traditionally followed, as the local plan emerges and the NDMPs dictate a different course of action. Where does the guidance to which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred fit into that? Which fits into what and at which part?
In an earlier debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, also said, perhaps not with the conviction that I had hoped to hear, that, in the event of a neighbourhood plan being more up to date than a local plan—hence in date—it would stand up against an NDMP central government directive. I would be delighted if that is true, but I would be substantially surprised if she says that she did say that; I must have misheard something.
We have some moving parts here, and it is a terribly inconvenient time of the day to resolve those difficulties. A lengthy letter may be the solution, but I just pose those questions. This is the fundamental way in which the current Government are aiming to square a circle out of their national planning policy. Whether they want more houses, where they want them and how fast—all those things—are driven by what comes out of local plans, and they will be framed by what is in the NDMPs, which are not published. Forgive me if I am jumping to a conclusion here; perhaps the planning management policy that comes out will say, “It is okay, guys; do your own thing and send your local plans in when they are ready”, but I have a feeling that that is not the context in which they are being drawn up.
Anything that the noble Earl or the noble Baroness can say to clarify that situation, either this evening or in a subsequent written report, would be gratefully received on this side, because we are baffled and bemused by how this is all supposed to hang together, as things stand.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, this group of amendments addresses local plans: the critical planning documents that local planning authorities prepare with their communities to plan for sustainable growth.
Amendment 198, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, would require deliberative democracy forums to be involved in the early stages of plan-making. Yes, I have seen this work, and very successfully, but there are other ways of doing it as well so I do not think we would want to be too prescriptive. However, I thank the noble Baroness for this amendment because it provides me with the opportunity to talk about community engagement.
The English planning system already gives communities a key role so that they can take an active part in shaping their areas and, in so doing, build local pride and belonging. We are not changing this; in fact, we are strengthening it through the Bill. Communities must be consulted on local plans and on individual planning applications. However, we know that current levels of engagement can sometimes fall below our ambitions. That is why, through the Bill, we will be increasing opportunities for communities to get involved in planning for their area to ensure that development is brought forward in a way that works best for local people.
As I mentioned earlier, the Bill reforms the process for producing a local plan so that it is simpler, faster and easier for communities to engage with. A number of measures in the Bill will create wholly new opportunities for people to engage with planning in their communities. Neighbourhood priorities statements will make it easier and quicker for local communities to set out the priorities for their area. Similarly, mandatory design codes will ensure that communities will be directly involved in making rules on how they want the new developments in their area to look and feel.
Measures to digitise the planning system will also transform the way that information about plans, planning applications and the evidence underpinning them is made available. We have funded 45 pilots, including in councils that have some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country, to demonstrate how digital approaches to engagement can make the planning system more accountable, democratic and inclusive. We have also committed to producing new guidance on community, which will show the different ways in which communities and industry can get involved and highlight best practice, including the opportunity that digital technology offers.
I hope that I have made clear the work that we are already doing to drive forward progress in improving community engagement. With regard to the three pilots from DCMS, I will undertake to ask that department where they are and what they intend to do with them, including discussing them with the LGA. I will come back to the noble Lord when I have an answer.
On Amendments 209 and 211 in the names of my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Young of Cookham—I keep thinking that we are getting to the 2000s of these because we have been going so long—the Government want the planning system to be truly plan-led, to give communities more certainty that the right homes will be built in the right places. To achieve that, plans will be given more weight in decision-making. They will be faster to produce and easier to navigate and understand. We expect that future local plans should continue to provide a positive vision for the future of each area, and policies to deliver that vision. However, as was remarked in the other place, currently communities and applicants can face an alphabet soup of planning documents and terms, leaving all but the most seasoned planning professionals confused; so the Bill introduces a simple requirement for authorities to prepare a single local plan for their area, and provides clear requirements on what future local plans must, and may, include. Authorities may wish to include strategic priorities and policies in future local plans. There is nothing in the Bill to stop them.
There was quite a discussion provided by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham on homes, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on things such as build-out. I have looked forward, and these issues will be discussed in much more detail in future debates, so if those noble Lords do not mind if I do not answer them today, I might answer them on Thursday. Perhaps we could wait for the relevant groups of amendments on those two things.
On the specific subject of local plan polices to deliver sustainable economic growth, I make it clear that we are retaining the current legal requirement at Section 39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 for authorities to prepare plans with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development.
I turn to Amendment 212, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. This amendment would amend Schedule 7 to the Bill to allow a local planning authority—
Lord Lansley (Con)
My noble friend said that there was nothing in the Bill that stops local authorities specifying what are strategic policies. My point is a completely contrary one to that. It is that the NPPF says that they should set out what their strategic priorities and strategic policies are; so why does the Bill not say that?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I do not think that we have got to the NPPF yet. It is out for review, and let us see what is in it.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My point is that we know what the Government are proposing to say in the NPPF. The Bill is inconsistent with that. Is my noble friend suggesting that she has already decided that the NPPF will not make a distinction between strategic and non-strategic policies? Frankly, that is not going to happen. If she looks at the green-belt section, the distinction between strategic and non-strategic policies in relation to green-belt designation is an absolutely central distinction.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
No, I am saying that we have not made that decision yet, but this is as it is in this part of the Bill.
Amendment 212, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, would amend Schedule 7 to the Bill to allow local planning authorities to use their local plan to amend the details of existing outline planning permissions, so that they are in accordance with the adopted local plan. Our planning reforms seek to ensure that plans, produced following consultation with local communities, have a greater influence over individual planning decisions to ensure that development reflects what those local communities want. In particular, our new decision-making framework under Clause 86 will deliver to a more plan-led system, providing greater certainty for these communities.
Enabling local plans to effectively revise existing outline planning permissions, even where development has already started, undermines this certainty. It also runs counter to the long-standing position that the grant of planning permission is a development right that also provides the certainty that developers need to raise finance and implement the permission. I fear that small and medium-sized builders would be especially impacted by such a change and would face significant wasted costs and delays at a time when we need to support them.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsWednesday 22nd March 2023
(1 year, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-VII(b) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Seventh Marshalled List) - (22 Mar 2023)
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I nearly lost that chance, having sat here for several days waiting for this. I agree with everything my noble friend Lord Young said on the amendments he and I have jointly tabled in this group, except for one word: he referred to his “chequered” career, but I would say “distinguished”. We will replace “chequered” with “distinguished”, but otherwise I agree with everything he said. That helps, because it means that I do not have to repeat the arguments he made.
I want to speak to Amendments 184A and 187A very briefly. I will also explain Amendment 185, which my noble friend did not dwell on, and say a word or two about Amendment 183—the lead amendment in this group, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage—which he did refer to. As my noble friend said, the issue we are turning to now is the plan-led system. How local plans are to be made and what the relationship is to be between the local plan and the national development management policies are very important questions.
To paraphrase one of the key questions that arises out of this, which I think we need to understand now in order to address these issues in the Bill at a later stage, would the Government be kind enough to explain to what extent the provisions presently in the National Planning Policy Framework are going to be national development management policies in the future? They will then acquire a different status—although, I have to say, it is quite difficult in many cases for a local planning authority to proceed on the basis of operating with the guidance in the NPPF, because inspectors will look to the NPPF as a basis for the judgments they make on whether a plan is sound, and indeed whether determinations in themselves are sound on appeal. We may be looking at distinctions or differences between the NPPF and NDMP without there being that much of a difference between them. In practice, the legal differences are clear, and the extent to which the NPPF is going to be turned into NDMP and given that status is important, and we need to know that.
As my noble friend Lord Young said, the revised draft of the NPPF, which the Government have consulted on and have yet to tell us the final outcome of, states:
“Policies in local plans and spatial development strategies should be reviewed to assess whether they need updating at least once every five years”.
My noble friend referred to the loophole or the issue here, which is that local planning authorities decide for themselves whether that review turns into an updated local plan. I give him and the House one very specific example, which is close to me. I should remind the House, as I have mentioned previously, of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. East Cambridgeshire adopted a local plan on 21 April 2015, which covers the period up to 2031. In April 2020—five years later—the authority conducted a review and decided that it did not need to update the plan, save with respect to the housing supply numbers. So, it conducted a single-issue review.
I will not dwell on some of the issues, but I have various complaints about this. First, there is the idea that the housing number is unrelated to other issues in the plan—that the housing supply in the decade ahead is unrelated to issues of environmental concern or whatever. That seems to have been ignored by them. However, I make the point that the inspector, who conducted an examination in public in the latter part of last year, said that it was not in his remit at all to look at whether the plan should be updated or not, whether anything other than housing should be updated or not, and indeed whether the final date of the plan should be beyond 2031. Of course, what the local authority is planning to do in this case is to update its housing figures, but when it has done so, it will extend for only about six years rather than the 15 years that the NPPF would imply. Notwithstanding that, they got away with it. So I very much agree with my noble friend and hope that the Minister will think hard about how we might make sure that we have local plans.
However, our Amendments 184A and 187A go precisely to the issue of requiring local plans to be up to date. If they are not up to date, in our view it cannot be right that the same principles apply in terms of the compliance or otherwise of determinations made on planning applications if the local plan to which they relate is out of date. There must be a distinction. Our amendments simply add “up-to-date” in front of “development plan.” They do not say, “What’s the relationship between a planning application and a determination on that planning application in relation to a local plan that is no longer up to date?” We need to resolve that. I suggest to my noble friend on the Front Bench that Ministers should think about whether there is as yet something they can do to distinguish between the proper relationship between development plans and in this particular instance determinations of planning applications, which should be made according to an up to date local plan, and local plans that had been adopted but are now out of date. They need to address the question of whether they are proper material considerations but not necessarily determinative. That seems to be the right way to go.
Amendment 185, which is in my name, that of my noble friend, and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, relates to the question of a determination on a planning application and that it should be made in accordance with the local plan. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 says in Section 38(6):
“If regard is to be had to the development plan for the purpose of any determination to be made under the planning Acts the determination must be made in accordance with the plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise”.
It has said that since 2004, so there is considerable case law relating to this, and those working in the planning system have experience of working with that. They know that it means that, in making a determination on a planning application, local planning authorities have to weigh material considerations. However, courts pretty much do not second-guess the weight that planning officers and planning committees give to various considerations in considering an application. We have had nearly 20 years of that.
The Government have rewritten this bit and inserted the word “strongly”—
“unless material considerations strongly indicate otherwise”.
That says to me that two things are going to happen. First, it is the Government’s intention to limit and restrict the circumstances in which decisions are made other than in accord with a local plan or with national development management policies. That means—which goes to the point that we have been debating in this group—that it reduces the role of the planning committee and the local planning authority, because they do not balance the weight any more. Most of the material considerations, almost by definition, will not be enough to indicate that they should do other than what would be demanded by the local plan and the NDMP.
The second thing that will inevitably result from this is that there will be a large amount of litigation, because the question of what “strongly” means in this context will be hard to determine. There will not be case law or precedent—a large number of decisions will not previously have been made. Where does “strongly” change the balance? How is that weight to be shifted? It is very unwise for the Government to be proceeding down this path. It would create a better balance across the Bill generally and we would be better off in many cases just to leave things as they are if they cannot demonstrate that there is a mischief to which this is the answer.
I will stop there, but I just want to refer to one other thing. I thought that Amendment 216, which is not in my name but in that of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, rather pointed to an issue. Schedule 7 on page 294, which is about plan making, would take out a rather curious few words where the Government say that local plans must not
“be inconsistent with or (in substance) repeat any national development management policy”.
I just have a question: what is the point of national development management policies if it is not essentially to write for local planning authorities large amounts of their local plan? If the local planning authority then puts that language into its local plan, does that mean it is repeating it or incorporating it? What does “repeat” mean in this context? I thought the whole point was that local plans would “repeat” national development management policies, yet we are being told in the legislation that that is not what they are to do. That is a genuine question to which I really do not know the answer, but I hope we can find out a bit more from my noble friend later.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, my name is on Amendment 191A, tabled by my noble friend Lady Thornhill, as is that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. It stipulates the process for the Secretary of State to designate and review a national development management policy, including minimum public consultation requirements and a process of parliamentary scrutiny based on processes set out in the Planning Act 2008, as amended, for national policy statements. It is an amendment to Clause 87.
Clause 87, which is a matter of only 20 or so lines, defines the meaning of “national development management policy” as
“a policy (however expressed) of the Secretary of State in relation to the development or use of land in England, or any part of England, which the Secretary of State by direction designates as a national development management policy.”
It then says that the Secretary of State can revoke a direction and modify a national development management policy. It goes on to say:
“Before making or revoking a direction … or modifying a national development management policy, the Secretary of State must ensure that such consultation with, and participation by, the public or any bodies or persons (if any) as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate takes place.”
In planning terms, this is the most gross act of centralisation that I can recall from the various Bills we have had relating to planning policy.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I hope my noble friend will forgive me for interrupting. I understand the point she is making about Amendment 216, and why she is resisting removing the idea that local plans must not be inconsistent with national development management policies, but it also says, “or (in substance) repeat”.
I am trying to understand. Let us take the chapter in the NPPF on green belt. The first part is about plan-making for the green belt, and the second part is about proposals coming forward within green belt land and the criteria that should be applied as to whether or not an application would be accepted. On that latter part, is my noble friend saying that the local plan cannot repeat that—that it must therefore refer to it but not repeat it? Is that the point she is making?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The whole idea of moving national policies away from local policies is that we do not have to repeat them. I will reflect on what my noble friend says about how it is referred if an area has a particular issue with something such as the green belt and come back to him, because I think he has a point.
Amendment 221, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, seeks to require older people’s housing needs assessments to be included in the evidence for local plans and would require local authorities to consider the needs for older people’s housing when preparing such plans. While I entirely understand the sentiment behind this amendment, the proposed approach is not needed. National policy already sets strong expectations, and we recently consulted on strengthening this further. The existing National Planning Policy Framework makes clear that the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including older people, should be assessed and reflected in planning policies. In 2019, we also published guidance to help local authorities implement the policies that can deliver on this expectation.
I also make it clear to noble Lords that, to further improve the diversity of housing options available to older people and to boost the supply of specialist elderly accommodation, we have proposed to strengthen the existing policy by adding a specific expectation that, when ensuring the needs of older people are met, particular regard is given to retirement housing, housing with care and care homes. We know these are important types of housing that can help support our ageing population.
Furthermore, there is already a provision in the Bill that sets out that the Secretary of State must issue guidance for local planning authorities on how their local plan and any supplementary plans, taken as a whole, should address housing needs that result from old age or disability. These are strong legislative and policy safeguards which should ensure that the needs of older people are taken fully into account. For that reason, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Best, will understand why we do not support this amendment.
I note that there is a question from my noble friend Lord Young and the noble Lord, Lord Best, on the task force. I will go back to the department and ask for an update. I can assure noble Lords that I will give them one in the next couple of days—certainly before Recess or Report.
I hope I have said enough to enable the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, to withdraw her Amendment 183 and for the other amendments in this group not to be moved when reached.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsWednesday 15th March 2023
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-V(b) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Fifth Marshalled List) - (15 Mar 2023)
Earl Howe (Con)
I obviously listened with great care to the noble Baroness when she made her initial intervention. I take on board the point she made, which I understand. It was made by other noble Lords. I am trying to set out for the Committee the direction the Government are coming from in framing the Bill’s provisions.
I just want to emphasise a point that I made in an earlier debate, which may not be sufficiently appreciated. I look in particular at the noble Lord, Lord Mann. The Bill in no way removes any powers or functions of district councils, which are rightly their own sovereign bodies and will continue to exercise their own powers and functions within the broader context of the CCA. Indeed, as we have already debated, we fully expect that, in many cases, CCAs will decide to give district councils a seat at the table as non-constituent members, should they deem that this will usefully inform decision-making. It would be open to a CCA to give voting rights to such a non-constituent member, if it considered this appropriate. It is right that we should give CCAs that freedom. The sub-strategic matters for which district councils are primarily responsible will often be directly germane to the strategic issues being considered and decided on at CCA level.
I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for the points he made. As I am sure he is aware, we will immerse ourselves in the issues he raised on national development plans when we move to the parts of the Bill relating to planning, but I hope for now that that explanation will assist the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in understanding why—
Lord Lansley (Con)
I apologise for intervening at this late stage, having made no speech, but I would like to ask a couple of questions of my noble friend that relate to Clause 43. The first is a simple one. There is a reference to a combined authority being able to make a proposal relating to a new combined county authority. I am confused, since I understood that a combined county authority would not be able to encompass any part of the area of an existing combined authority. Is it anticipated that circumstances might arise where a combined authority would transfer some of its area to a new combined county authority? That is just a question for future reference.
Secondly, the clause includes a reference, which we have seen before, to an “economic prosperity board”—which I take in most cases to mean local enterprise partnerships—having the right to make a proposal or having the requirement to consent to a proposal for a new CCA. The Government announced in the Budget today that they intend, as they put it, to withdraw support for local enterprise partnerships from April 2024. What does this imply? How does the business community have a voice and through whom, since the Government intend the functions of the local enterprise partnerships to be devolved to local government? Would my noble friend at least agree that something might be said about this at an early stage, before we complete this section relating to what an economic prosperity board is supposed to do?
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I think that my best course is to write to my noble friend on both issues. He is perfectly right that Clause 43(2)(e) refers to
“a combined authority the whole or any part of whose area is within the proposed area”
as being a body to which the section applies; that is to say, a body which may prepare a proposal for the establishment of a CCA for an area and submit that proposal to the Secretary of State. It would be wise of me to set down in writing the kinds of circumstances in which we envisage that particular geographic area playing a part in the formation of a CCA. On the questions my noble friend raised on economic prosperity boards, I again think it best that I should write to him.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that the policy for CCA establishment and operation, as reflected in the Bill, neither belittles nor marginalises the important role played by district councils. When a CCA is formed, any district councils within its geographic radius will be important stakeholders—it is very hard to see how they could not be—albeit alongside many others. However, they cannot be a constituent member of a co-operative local government grouping whose membership is determined by reference to strategic functions and powers which are the primary province of upper-tier and unitary authorities. That is the logic.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I shall presume to follow my noble friend and speak to Amendment 310 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I support my noble friend’s amendment, which is very helpful in setting out in full the potential structure of a power to enable local authorities to hold meetings remotely. Of course it does not require them to do so—it simply permits them to do so.
The story of this, essentially, is that during the pandemic the Coronavirus Act 2020 permitted local authorities to hold meetings remotely, and many did. That expired on 7 May 2021, and the Local Government Association and others sought a declaratory judgment from the High Court as to whether they could continue to meet remotely, in the absence of specific legislative provision. The High Court said that they could not—that it was clear that meetings required persons to be in the place required under the 1972 Act. Since 7 May 2021, they cannot proceed with remote meetings, which is a serious impediment, not least since the LGA’s chair at the time said that:
“The pandemic proved that using virtual meeting options can help councils work more effectively and efficiently and can in fact increase engagement from both councillors and residents”.
The first is fairly obvious; the second is particularly helpful. A survey conducted by the LGA back in November 2021 demonstrated that costs were lower for virtual meetings but also, and more significantly, public attendance could be higher at virtual meetings. It is very important to give local authorities those options.
The point that I come to is that the Government at the time, back in 2021, issued a call for evidence on remote meetings. We are now the best part of two years on and they have not proceeded on the basis of that call for evidence. I would hope or expect that the call for evidence demonstrated that this is an opportunity to assist local authorities to structure their meetings in a way that can maximise engagement and participation, and I am at a loss to know why they have not proceeded. At the time, of course, they said that there was a lack of a suitable legislative opportunity—well, here we are, and here it is. The Government have not put it in the Bill, but we have the option to do so. I may press my noble friend the Minister a little more than my noble friend Lady McIntosh might do: the time has come for the Government to get off the fence on this one. On Report, the best possible solution would be for them to bring forward their own amendment for this purpose.
There is a difference between the two amendments. Mine relates only to planning meetings and its structure is to create a regulation-making power for the Secretary of State. I suspect that, for that reason, it is preferable to the Government since, in Amendment 158, we have a regulation under the Coronavirus Act 2020 that is being turned into primary legislation. That is not always the most helpful way to structure things. I think the right way forward would be for the Government to introduce their own amendment on Report.
I was interested in this from the point of view of planning meetings, as part of the general process of trying to encourage efficient and effective decision-making in planning. I understand that there is an argument for this to be applied more generally, although it was obvious, from some of the references to evidence given before the High Court, that there is some hesitation on the part of experts about holding, for example, councils’ full or annual meetings virtually. The problem is the lack of personal interaction between councillors at such meetings and the difficulty of managing business under those circumstances. It is fair to say that simply giving local authorities this power would be a straight- forward way to do it, but I completely understand if some restrictions, particularly on full or annual council meetings, limited the exercise of that power. Either way, I hope that my noble friend indicates, whether definitely or otherwise, that the Government will think urgently about whether to bring forward measures to give local government this power in the Bill, through amendment on Report.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I support Amendments 158 and 310. Obviously Amendment 310 is more limited so I see it as a fallback, but I honestly cannot see any reason for the Government not to accept Amendment 158.
Covid obviously provided us with a lot of challenges, one of which was how to keep things going and how society and, for example, your Lordships’ House could still function. At the time, I thought that your Lordships’ House managed better than the other place. We were quicker to put in remote systems for voting and participating, which I thought was a huge advance in the methods that we used for debates and to create legislation.
I actually did not know that councils cannot meet virtually any more and think it is a terrible shame. I have been a councillor and it is really hard work. Going to council meetings on a cold wet night in November, December, January or February can be an extra challenge. Quite honestly, why on earth would we not do this? Virtual council meetings—and virtual meetings of your Lordships’ House—worked extremely well. We all found that we could work the mute button, although some have gone backwards on that. We still allow noble Lords to engage virtually, so it is logical for councillors.
Work has changed because of Covid. More people are working remotely and not going into the office as much. One of my daughters, although she has a full-time job, goes into the office only two days a week now. My partner goes into his office one day a month and my other daughter goes into her office once every two months. Even so, they all work extremely well and efficiently. I do not understand this regressive move.
There have been other regressive moves here. I loathe how we still start in the afternoons, even though we started earlier during Covid. It is easy to slip back into bad, old habits instead of taking new ideas forward and engaging in the best way possible. I hope that the Government see sense on this and, as is suggested, bring their own amendment forward. We would all support it.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsWednesday 22nd February 2023
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-II(a) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (21 Feb 2023)
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who has given us a very persuasive insight into a subject that I know we shall return to. I look forward to her contributing to further debates on the housing supply issue when we get to those parts of the Bill—perhaps in a fortnight’s time. We will have had a chance to take on board her excellent arguments.
I do not want to repeat what I said on Monday; I shall just precis it to this extent. I do not think we should put the missions in the Bill; we should have a process in the Bill that permits this House and the other place to consider the missions and metrics in detail every time the Government publish a statement. We can do that either by way of what I suggest in Amendment 25, which would give the two Houses the opportunity to debate such a statement; or the Government might at some point say that they should be published in draft and be the subject of debates by the two Houses. We are having that kind of debate today; it is exactly the kind of debate we ought to have every time there is such a statement or one is to be renewed, but at the moment, the Government simply lay it, publish it and that is it. That is not good enough.
I want to talk about two missions. I was not planning to say much about the first, but I was prompted by the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I feel that we have been here before. My noble friend Lord Howe and I have definitely been here before. We published and introduced—he will have done it in this House—the Healthy Lives, Healthy People White Paper of November 2010, which followed and reflected into policy at the time Sir Michael Marmot’s Fair Society, Healthy Lives work, which we and the previous Government supported prior to the White Paper.
We are talking about a very difficult mission to define. We are talking about reducing inequalities in society, because the inequalities in society are the source of the inequalities in health outcomes. Let us at least look at how we can tackle the many things that are the social determinants of health and try to capture them in something like, for example, disability-free life expectancy. The Government have used healthy life expectancy, which I think is the same thing. We know that it is poor in this country, and we know of the lack of public health support—notwithstanding that we had a shift a decade ago to support for local governance in public health, which I think has actually been proven to be a good thing, but which has not been funded in the way that local government and the health service would have wished it. We had a very good and helpful debate on that when the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who is in his place, had his Private Member’s Bill, but I will not repeat all that now.
When one looks at the metrics intended to support the Government’s mission, it is very curious. Yes, we need a tobacco control plan, although I do not know quite what the Government’s tobacco control plan now is. Yes, we must reduce the prevalence of obesity, but I do not now know precisely what the Government’s obesity strategy is. But as far as the reduction of prevalence or impacts of diseases are concerned, only cancer is mentioned. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, here; I thought that in the NHS we had escaped from trying to elevate certain diseases to the point where they were regarded as more important than others. Certainly, when we talk about parity of esteem between mental and physical health, surely we must have parity of esteem between cardiovascular health and cancer diagnosis. Why do we regard one as more important than the other? There are metrics that could help us; the NHS outcomes framework was first established in about 2011 and is a work in progress, but is absolutely instrumental. It should be the basis, not the Government having a mission which picks one or two things out of the outcomes framework and regards them as important when others are not.
When I was Secretary of State, over a decade ago, we had, over time, been improving life expectancy in this country on average by one month in every year. That means that if you want to improve life expectancy by a year, on average it is likely to take you 12 years. Where does “five years” come from? Things have actually got worse, not better, since a decade ago—particularly since 2017, on the data. Based on what I remembered, it would take us 60 years to improve our healthy life expectancy by five years. The Health Foundation last March, after the missions White Paper was published, produced its own data. It believed that on the previous data it would take 75 years, but it had run it with the most recent data on life expectancy and healthy life expectancy since 2017, and the figure was 192 years. If we are to have a debate about the missions and metrics, let us get down into whether the metrics are reasonable. If they are not, they should be revised, because if we are going to be standing here in 2030—I hope we all are; disability-free life expectancy in the Lords is pretty good—we want to have achieved these missions. We do not want to have excuses for why we did not—for example, because the metric was not a reasonable one in the first place, or the Government have abandoned it.
I want to mention one other thing; at Second Reading, quite well on in the debate, the role of the private sector was mentioned. I just want to come back to mission 1 and this issue of the economy, because I am not quite sure why measuring pay is there. It is a measure of relative economic well-being, but targeting pay is not the answer. Targeting employment is a good answer; if people are in employment, pay will differ in different parts of the country because the cost of living and the economic structures differ significantly. Let us improve the economic structures, reduce the economic disparities and improve the economic growth in the less advantaged parts of this country, and the pay will come with them.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I would like to go back on that specific issue because we would need to work with the Department of Health and Social Care and get its agreement. We are quite early in the establishment of the unit in order to do that, but I will take back that issue and come back to the noble Lord.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend. I am coming back to a point that she raised a moment ago on the Levelling Up Advisory Council, which I mentioned on Monday but did not at that time get an answer on whether it had met, what it discussed, what it said and to whom. I now discover that on 14 February a Minister in the department wrote to Clive Betts, the Select Committee chair, to say that the council had met several times, had met Ministers and was engaging in a research programme. It was interesting, because the letter said that the council had
“engaged in discussions on levelling up policy with stakeholders externally, including members attending an event with Carsten Schneider … Minister of State for East Germany and Equivalent Living Conditions, hosted by the German Embassy”.
Might the council engage at all with Parliament? We are told that the council has been around for a year, but I have had no engagement—no one from the council has come anywhere near me to suggest that it might talk to us about the levelling-up missions.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I do not know, but the council is already in train and working. On the fact that it has not come to Parliament, I will ask what the remit has been for the past year. It may have been a remit just to get together on some early work, but I will get an answer to my noble friend on that.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsMonday 20th February 2023
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-II Second marshalled list for Committee - (20 Feb 2023)
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I agree with a great deal of what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has said about the need for monitoring and evaluating any government process, but particularly one as deep-seated and far-ranging as this is obviously intended to be.
I will speak to Amendments 24, 26, 32 and 49, all of which appear in this group. They are tabled to explore how the outputs from the mechanism that Clause 1 sets up are to be monitored and, even more importantly, evaluated. Noble Lords will know that Governments are notoriously slack at carrying out timely and effective evaluation of their policies. They are very often launched in a blaze of glory, or, on this occasion, in a White Paper, and what follows is often a serious disappointment. My noble friend Lady Pinnock has shaped that argument very well in the debate on the first group. Avoiding monitoring and evaluation is deep-seated in the government machine, which actively avoids formal monitoring as far as it can and definitely seeks to avoid any public evaluation of what that monitoring reveals. That is not specific to this Government: I would be stretching my memory to think of a Government who have eagerly embraced independent evaluation and monitoring of any of their policies.
Interestingly, the Government’s White Paper is very strong on “accountability” and “transparency”, which it describes as key attributes that will be built into the levelling-up programme. Unfortunately, the Bill completely omits to mention these two essential characteristics of levelling up, and for that matter, it also omits any mention of specific missions. These amendments are designed to tackle that gap. No doubt my amendments and those of the noble Baroness could be strengthened, and I hope we will see how best we can do that. I regard these as quite modest, de minimis amendments to establish the principle of what is needed.
The first of the amendments I have tabled with my noble friend Lady Pinnock, Amendment 24, simply inserts another prerequisite for any mission statement coming into force: that there must first be an affirmative resolution by each House of Parliament, not merely having them laid before us. In fact, that is a really basic requirement for any such far-reaching policy package: it should have proper parliamentary scrutiny. Without this amendment or something very like it, not one of the mission statements will have ever received any direct democratic endorsement.
The Minister may say that this was in the Conservative manifesto of 2019. The slogan was certainly in the manifesto, but were the missions? No, they were not. Were the metrics of any of the missions in the manifesto? No, they were not. Importantly, bearing in mind that this is a political process, did the Government even have a settled view on what levelling up was during the passage of three Prime Ministers through Downing Street and four changes of Secretary of State last year? No, they did not have a settled view. In fact, except for an unusually hostile reception of a Budget last autumn, levelling up would now be taking off in a completely different direction, with a completely different Administration and objectives. A 2019 election slogan cannot absolve the mission statements from parliamentary scrutiny. Indeed, the Government’s own White Paper makes it clear that such accountability and transparency in the process itself is important.
On transparency, I admit that my claim that it is all in the White Paper overlooks the fact that that was indeed three Prime Ministers ago, and maybe that has been scrubbed in the nine months since. Perhaps the Minister can confirm whether it is still an important principle in the Government’s thinking about levelling up. I therefore hope that I will get a positive answer from the Minister on Amendment 24, and that she will be very quick and willing to accept it.
Amendment 26 points to a critical weakness in Clause 1: the complete absence of accountability of Ministers of the Crown. Clause 1(8) rushes from dealing with the first iteration of statements of mission—those that are in front of us now via the White Paper—to publishing the second iteration, without ever passing “Go”. There is no mention in Clause 1(8) of independently examined evidence and evaluation of what has happened so far and no accompanying analysis, but simply a straight jump to laying it before Parliament, which will be, as far as I understand it, on a take-it-or-leave-it unamendable basis. Again, the Minister may be able to reassure me that these will be open, debatable and amendable by Parliament. I should be very pleased, and totally astonished, if she were to say that.
Amendment 26 requires that independent evaluations be published to accompany the new draft mission statements when they come before Parliament, and that the draft revised missions themselves are constructed by the process set out in Amendment 29, which we will come to later this evening. That requires that such missions shall, prior to their adoption, have been endorsed by the devolved Administrations and by local government within England in respect of their specific areas.
A central part of levelling up has to be a built-in independent evaluation system providing analysis alongside each round of mission statements. Otherwise, we all know what will happen—it happens all the time: targets will be fudged and stretched and outcomes will not be monitored properly, yet the process will still go blithely on, repeating the same errors and omissions time and again until, in due course, it lapses into history and is replaced by the latest sparkly new slogan. Levelling up will become just another in a long string of non-performing slogans.
That brings me to Amendment 32 in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Pinnock and the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. I appreciate their support. As it stands, Clause 2(2)(a) only requires that the formal periodic report on levelling up includes the Minister’s own assessment of how well things are going. Our amendment would require that, alongside that ministerial assessment, there should be
“an independent evaluation of the effectiveness of the progress that has been made”.
That is not very challenging, is it? The effectiveness of the progress that has been made should be supported by an independent evaluation.
That is surely the true test of accountability—for the evaluation to be based on objective evidence, not a subjective assessment, least of all a subjective assessment made by the person being held to account. We would not accept in most areas of responsibility that the accountability, assessment and evaluation is done by the person being held to account. I very much hope that the Minister agrees and will accept Amendment 32 in due course.
Finally, Amendment 49, to which my noble friend Lady Pinnock has added her name, which I appreciate, takes these essential reforms forward to apply to all future iterations of statements of mission. This is not just about getting it right now; it is about embedding a process that will continue indefinitely as levelling up rolls out iteration after iteration.
Taken together, these four amendments plug the huge gap between the good intentions and smooth words in the White Paper and the stark, Whitehall-controlled process being set out in the Bill. I look forward to hearing that they find favour with your Lordships and the Minister.
Lord Lansley (Con)
If I may, I wish to speak to Amendment 25 in my name. I begin by drawing attention to my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, which will become more relevant in relation to the later housing, planning and development-related issues than to this first part relating to missions.
In the earlier group, there was a reference to this Bill being more than one Bill. It is in truth three Bills all in one place. When we started out in this, I was reminded of that story about the elephant: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Let us take it just one bite at a time and try not to eat it all in one go.
I did want to make a point about missions, and I will add to it a little. Amendment 25, to which I speak, was really about trying to explore, with my noble friends on the Front Bench, the Government’s overall attitude to the process of parliamentary scrutiny of their policy priorities. For example, a number of noble Lords will have participated in our recent scrutiny of the Procurement Bill. In the that Bill, now in the other place, the Government included a provision relating to parliamentary scrutiny of the national procurement policy statement, an important statement of the Government’s priorities. The Government are resisting being told what those priorities should be, but none the less consented in the Bill, in the other place, that it was Parliament’s job, if it did not approve of their priorities, to say so by means of a Motion.
Amendment 25, which is subtly different from Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and others, which says that Parliament must approve the statements, is in precisely the same form as the Procurement Bill regarding the scrutiny of the national procurement policy statement, in that the statement will be proceeded with unless either House resolves not to approve it within 40 days. It uses exactly the same terminology; I have simply lifted it from the Procurement Bill.
I want to know, what is the difference? Why, in this respect, do the Government not think it appropriate for Parliament to approve—or, indeed, if it objects, not to approve—of the Government’s executive decisions? They are undoubtedly important. The priorities in the Procurement Bill are terribly important. The missions are terribly important. I cannot understand why one should have this form of scrutiny and the other should not. My first question to my noble friend is: why can we not have the same degree of scrutiny in relation to this statement as the Government are giving us in relation to the national procurement policy statement?
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, this group of amendments addresses a number of important issues around accountability and scrutiny of the levelling-up missions, including looking at the roles of Parliament, the public and academics. I will begin by addressing Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which would require the statement of levelling-up missions to be published within 10 days of Royal Assent. The Government have already been clear that the first statement of missions will be based on the levelling-up White Paper. We have committed within the Bill to publish this statement within one month of Part 1 coming into force. I suggest that this is already a prompt timescale and a realistic one, because it includes time to complete internal procedures before publication and the laying of a report. So I think that further shortening that timescale is unnecessary.
Amendment 24, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, would require mission statements to be approved by Parliament. Amendment 49, also in the noble Lord’s name, would similarly require approval from Parliament and the devolved Governments for any revisions to statements of levelling-up missions. Amendment 25, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, requires a Minister to withdraw the statement if either House of Parliament decides not to approve it.
Let me be quite clear. The Government are committed to enabling Parliament, the public and experts to fully scrutinise our progress against our missions. The missions and metrics will be published in a statement of missions laid before Parliament. The proposed initial set of these metrics has already been published in the levelling-up White Paper and is bound to be refined over time. That really does represent a significant step forward. For the first time, the law will require Ministers to set and publish missions that focus on reducing geographical inequalities.
Our approach to the missions is the same as the approach taken, for example, with the fiscal rules, or indeed with the Government’s mandate to NHS England: they are subject to scrutiny in Parliament but are not set out in law. His Majesty’s Treasury publishes its fiscal rules in a non-legislative policy document, but that is laid in Parliament. This does not in any way prevent the Government being held to account in keeping to their fiscal targets. What matters is the transparency of those targets and of the published data. The missions will be published in a policy document laid before, and debated in, Parliament. The first example of this document will be based on the levelling-up White Paper, as I have said.
As my noble friend made clear, the legislation sets out the framework for the missions, not the missions themselves. The Government are committed to laying and publishing statements of levelling-up missions and annual reports to ensure transparency and scrutiny. To my mind, it would be unthinkable that the Government would not take seriously any analysis, challenge or ideas put forward by Parliament or, indeed, by others outside Parliament and government. Again, what matters is that the missions and metrics should receive scrutiny from Parliament and the public. Ultimately, I would say to my noble friend Lord Lansley that we are dealing here with government policy. Parliament can express a view—Parliament can do whatever it likes—and may well influence policy in the future by doing so, but, in the end, it is the Government who need to be accountable and to take responsibility for their own agenda and the progress they make in fulfilling that agenda. My noble friend’s recent letter to all noble Lords—
Lord Lansley (Con)
I think we largely agree on the role of government in determining what the missions and metrics should be, but can my noble friend explain why the principle applied to the national procurement policy statement—that the Government decide what the priorities are and Parliament can debate them and if necessary say that it does not approve of them—is not applied to this important set of policy priorities? Why have the Government put that into legislation currently before the other place but not done the same in relation to this Bill?
Earl Howe (Con)
I think it was a relatively easy concession for the Government to make in the Procurement Bill because Parliament, as I just said, can decide to do whatever it likes. If any Member of either House wants to table a Motion to Regret against anything the Government are doing, they can do so, and the House as a whole can express its view. If that were to happen—I think it is unlikely—
Lord Lansley (Con)
I apologise for pressing my noble friend. I do not think it was a concession by the Government: I think it was written by the Government into the Bill. But, anyway, that is not the point. Is my noble friend saying that, if a statement were to be published and laid before Parliament, and a regret Motion were to be passed against it, the Government would withdraw the statement?
Earl Howe (Con)
As I said, it would be extremely unlikely for any government to ignore the view of either House of Parliament if that view had been expressed in the form of a Motion that had been widely supported. Of course, no Government would ever say that they had a monopoly of wisdom in areas such as this. If there are any good ideas coming forward from any source, it is appropriate to review the proposals on the table.
I think we are dancing on the head of a pin here, if I may say so to my noble friend, because it is very likely that government will receive advice from a number of quarters as they go forward with this agenda. As he said, we are having to deal with an extremely complex set of metrics, and we are keen that those with expertise, among whom your Lordships can be numbered, are able to scrutinise the progress that government is making and express a view if they wish to.
My noble friend Lady Scott’s recent letter to your Lordships stated a number of things that perhaps bear repeating. The statement of levelling-up missions will be based on the 12 missions set out in the White Paper. The statement will include detail about the metrics being used to monitor progress. As I mentioned, those metrics will be identical to the technical annexe in the White Paper as progressed by further work undertaken since then. In particular, it might be helpful for noble Lords to note that well-being and pride of place are still being worked on, but that this work is near completion. I hope that we can provide further detail about that quite soon.
Amendments 26 and 32 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and Amendment 38 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, put forward an independent body or independent evaluation of the missions and progress. The Government of course recognise that scrutiny and seeking expert advice will be important to ensuring that we deliver on our missions and level up the country. That is why we have already established the Levelling Up Advisory Council, chaired by Andy Haldane, to provide government with expert and independent advice to inform the design and delivery of the levelling-up agenda. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, mentioned the desirability of having academic and other outside expertise available to the council, and I absolutely agree. The council draws regularly on wider academic, business and other expertise to inform its advice, and includes voices from different parts of the UK.
Appointments to the Levelling Up Advisory Council are made at the discretion of the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and in accordance with the Cabinet Office processes for public appointments. Among the council’s membership are Sally Mapstone of the University of St Andrews, Cathy Gormley-Heenan of Ulster University, and Katherine Bennett, who chairs the Western Gateway, the UK’s first pan-regional partnership to bring together leaders from Wales and western England. I can tell the Committee that the Government will continue to look at ensuring that membership of the Levelling Up Advisory Council represents all parts of the UK. We are indeed already working with the devolved Administrations and with English local government on the levelling-up challenges and will continue to do so.
I will just add a couple of points for the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, in particular. As set out in the technical annexe to the White Paper, the missions largely rest on metrics published by the Office for National Statistics and others, so performance will be transparent and everyone will be able to judge how the Government are doing. That is right because, as I emphasised earlier, government should be accountable.
Amendment 41 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, would ensure that an annual report was published before a general election. I have to part company with her on that point; the timings for laying the report before Parliament and publishing documents are, in my view, rightly independent of the electoral cycle, as is the case for other key government frameworks such as the Charter for Budget Responsibility. The purpose of laying reports is to allow for Parliament to hold the Government to account on their progress towards the missions, and the Bill requires the Government to publish reports as soon “as is reasonably practicable”. Levelling up is a challenging, long-term agenda which cannot be achieved within a single electoral cycle. The framework for missions which we are establishing here reflects that long-term vision.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsTuesday 17th January 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 13 December 2022 - large print - (13 Dec 2022)
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. It was also a pleasure to listen to two excellent maiden speeches, not least that of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough; we were together for a decade in the other place as Members of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire and for Peterborough. I particularly enjoyed his one-nation sentiments. I draw attention to my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I have four quick points.
First, I do not think there are enough missions about wealth creation. I do not see how we will reduce economic disparities without additional wealth creation in the less advantaged regions. One of the salient differences in London and the east and south-east of England is that they have greater than their relative proportion of people working in the private sector, and a greater proportion of the stock of businesses. One of the missions should be for enhanced new business formation in the less advantaged regions, increasing the level of business and economic activity.
Secondly, on digitisation, I like what is in Chapter 1 of Part 3, but it should also enable us to be more ambitious, with local authorities reducing planning delays and getting on with putting local plans in place—most of them do not have them. However, as was mentioned earlier, they need more resources. They should not just get more money; we should have planning performance agreements between major developers and local authorities which tie additional resources directly to the performance of those tasks by those local authorities.
Thirdly, on the infrastructure levy, I do not understand how you can have one levy that tries to address probably three distinct things: first, the obligations associated directly with a development, which is where Section 106 reform should come in; secondly, the provision of social housing and additional tenures of housing; thirdly, infrastructure delivery, which may be completely unrelated to the development in question and somewhere else entirely. Those seem to be different things to me. I do not yet see how one levy could do that, and we may have to revisit it very carefully.
Finally, the Government are not going to mandate housing targets, I accept that, and there were sometimes anomalies in the way the standard method worked. But local authorities must have an up-to-date local plan, and it must be sound. A sound local plan is one that makes sufficient provision for anticipated housing need, and through which planning authorities work together within a given “travel to work area”, which may extend some distance. They should work together and co-operate to ensure that they provide for the anticipated additional housing requirements resulting from additional economic activity and employment in their respective areas. If they do not, the plan is not sound, and if they do not have a sound plan in place, they should not be able to refuse development. They should be required to put a sound plan in place, and they should accept the development necessary for the housing need relevant to their area.
I look forward to elaborating on these and other issues during our debates.
Sewel Convention
Lord Lansley Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I thank my noble friend for raising common frameworks, which I know this House has spent quite a bit of time working on and refining. I am sure that they provide a guideline on how we should engage with the devolved Administrations and will help to strengthen the union as a consequence.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My noble friend will be aware that treaty making is a reserved power to the United Kingdom Government, but the scope of the treaties into which we are now entering, particularly trade treaties, often impinges directly upon devolved powers and the devolved Administrations. When reporting under CRaG, Ministers have told the International Agreements Committee when they have consulted the devolved Administrations but they have not consistently told us what the DAs have told Ministers would be their objectives and what they are looking for. Will my noble friend help Ministers to ensure that their explanatory memorandum under CRaG covers this?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I am sure that we need to get the explanatory memoranda right. In addition, the Government recognise that we need to engage early so that legislatures and Administrations have as much time as possible to consider these matters before they are signed, in the case of treaties, or become Acts, if they are Bills. Of course, I take my noble friend’s point on board.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Lansley Excerpts(2 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, it was a great pleasure to hear the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Morse. I would characterise them as forcefully illustrating what value this House can bring in speaking out for freedom and against injustice, exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said, and, equally, for efficiency and effectiveness and exposing the Government’s legislation and policies to the test of meeting not only the broad principles we are looking for but their practical application as well. We are all grateful to both noble Lords and look forward very much to their future contributions.
I will briefly talk about two things. First, in relation to the planning Bill, I declare my interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I do not entirely share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, on that Bill. Clearly, Oliver Letwin’s report was right that it is not just all about planners and their speed, but they should not be absolved from the difficulties that those who are developing and delivering sometimes have in pre-commencement planning conditions and the like. A great deal of it is about diversity of supply and the delivery processes. This planning reform Bill will do very well if it focuses on that. For example, simplifying the processes of levying on developers for infrastructure is necessary, but a single infrastructure levy may not be the right answer because it must meet both the broader infrastructure objectives in an area and the infrastructure and social obligations of that development. These two things cannot be readily and easily merged into one infrastructure levy.
While I support the zonal development system, I do not think for a minute that it necessarily takes away the democratic involvement of local planning authorities. It is perfectly possible for planning authorities and the democratic process to be delivered through local plans in a zonal system. Indeed, given the importance that local plans will acquire as a result, it may encourage many more people to be involved in the plan-making stage, as at the moment they very often do not get involved and take an interest in plans only when planning applications come forward, which are largely predetermined by the structure of the local plan.
Secondly, I will mention the environment. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, is absolutely right that it must be at the heart of not just every fiscal event but every legislative programme. Given the urgency of the issue, every Queen’s Speech should be about how we meet our climate change objectives. Perhaps my noble friend will say something in responding to the debate about how we will do this, not just by setting targets and hoping that there will be the necessary transformations in production and consumer behaviour, but by putting the incentives in place between those two things. In the year ahead, we must set out, for example, how our carbon emissions trading scheme will incentivise a net-zero regime. Phasing out free allowances, increasing the auction reserve price and perhaps raising the carbon support price will take us to the point where the incentive structure gets us to net zero on the timescale required.
However, frankly, if we do it, but nobody else does, it will not succeed. We need not just the European Union to do it but the United States. We know that China is considering it, but we need them all to work together or we will end up with carbon border adjustments, which are a major source of trade friction and conflict. Not least—as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, is looking at me—we need a development programme which is sufficiently well resourced to fund decarbonisation in the developing world and developing economies as well. In this year ahead, we therefore need COP 26 to be a negotiation which delivers on an aligned structure of carbon taxation/pricing/emissions trading, which must be consistent internationally or it will fail. I look forward to that in the year ahead.
Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
Lord Lansley Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who has made lots of good points. Some of them relate directly to points that I was hoping to make, so I will not repeat them, but the importance of the building sector in achieving our net zero carbon objectives should not be underestimated. The second largest source of emissions is from buildings.
It is easy for us to focus far too much on the commendable achievements in building net zero carbon homes, but by my calculation, we simply have to recognise that, by 2050, something like two-thirds of the homes we live in will already have been built, so retrofitting and securing energy efficiency in our existing housing stock is absolutely critical. There are government schemes for this purpose, such as the Whole House Retrofit plan related to social housing, and so on.
The scope of these regulations is modest, and I welcome that. I know that we are all grateful to the Minister for explaining the regulations at the outset, but I shall unashamedly take the opportunity to talk about not the price of EPCs but the uses to which they should be put. Far too infrequently are EPCs seen as the spur to energy efficiency improvements that they should be, which is what we are looking for.
On this occasion I will not be drawn into the private rented sector. I know that the Government undertook a consultation in the latter part of last year. I am probably slightly disappointed that, in the event, they were not a bit more ambitious, because the cost-benefit ratio they ended up with suggested that the benefits did not outweigh the costs, but that of course was at the carbon price assumed between now and 2050.
Again, I will not go down this rabbit hole for too long because it is too important and too deep, but we ought to ensure that our carbon pricing is set at a level that forces change. If it is set at that level, it is also one that is likely to deliver substantial benefits in relation to the energy efficiency of buildings and the costs that renters and landlords have to meet.
I come back to the use of the EPC. Two-thirds of the existing housing stock has a rating of D or worse, so we need to effect change. There are government schemes: my noble friend Lord Moynihan is quite right; it is not that there are not schemes. The Government have put money and resources behind grant schemes, but the supply chain and the people influenced by it need these things to be sustained over a considerable period and we need the response to be substantial and positive. I am afraid it is not.
At the moment, even in the last few weeks, we are sitting here saying, “Why are people not taking up the green homes grant?” I think it would be far too easy to blame it on Covid and say, “They do not want people in their homes, understandably, so they are not taking up the grant.” However, it was true beforehand. We have had this with other insulation schemes. It is sometimes as brutally simple as people living in a house not wanting to empty their loft to let somebody up there to put the right insulation in place. They do not want the disruption.
I will put just one point to my noble friend in the hope he will convey it into the right ears across government. Like we do in the private rented sector, focusing on when there is a new tenancy, in the owner-occupied sector we must focus on the moment of sale—when the EPC is given to a potential new owner and they have a period ahead of them when they might reap the benefits of investment in energy efficiency. At that moment, they also are likely to empty the house. They may empty the loft and sometimes they can engineer a short window of opportunity for energy efficiency improvements to take place.
I suggest that, at that moment, rather than a grant scheme which comes and goes and depends on the vagaries of spending reviews, there could be a permanent allowance against stamp duty for energy efficiency improvements up to, say, the value of £5,000 that they undertake—if recommended as a result of an energy performance certificate. Such a scheme could be confined to houses with an EPC of D or worse or, to start off with, those rated F and G, to see how it goes.
I prefer tax incentives to government grant schemes. I prefer tax relief to expenditure. I prefer incentives people can permanently rely on and where they feel they are getting some of their own money back or not having to give their money to the Government. As the tax is targeted on that moment, the incentive can be deployed in that moment as well. I commend that thought to my noble friend.
I know government departments not only hesitate, but will not enter the territory of tax, because it is all the Treasury’s business. But if they have an objective—and there is an objective here—and they think it can best be achieved by working with the Treasury through a tax incentive, I ask that they go down that path.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Caine) (Con)
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Addington.
Business and Planning Bill
Lord Lansley ExcerptsTuesday 14th July 2020
(3 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Business and Planning Act 2020 View all Business and Planning Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 119-I Marshalled list for Committee - (8 Jul 2020)
Lord Lansley
“(i) beginning with 25 June 2020, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This will provide that where a relevant planning permission has a time limit for commencement of development between 25 June (when this Bill was introduced to Parliament) and 31 December 2020 , the time limit will be extended as provided for in subsection (2).
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I should draw attention to my interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, as entered in the register. As other noble Lords have done, I express my thanks to my noble friends for their discussions following my speech at Second Reading and for the very helpful letter from my noble friend Lord Howe.
I confess that all 13 amendments in this group are mine, but they are to achieve two purposes. The first is to substitute June for April, so extending time limits on permissions and listed building consents. Clause 17 relates to planning permissions; Clause 18 relates to outline planning permissions; Clause 19 relates to listed building consents. In all three cases, the Government have given a three-month extension from December to the end of March. My amendments would take that from 1 April to 1 June. Nine of the amendments are to achieve that in relation to these three clauses. The other amendments, which I shall come to later, are to deal with the circumstances in which those planning permissions should be revived or extended where additional environmental approval has been sought and given.
I start with the question of adding two months to the proposed three months' extension. There is a balance to be struck, and I quite understand the thinking of my noble friend and the Government. They want to reflect the fact that there has been a delay—a serious interruption—to the delivery of the project pipeline for development; equally, they do not want to extend so far as to allow for such developments to be delayed when they could and should proceed. I completely understand that. From my point of view, this is not a probing amendment; it is my assessment of what a practical decision is in the light of all the circumstances.
As I mentioned on Second Reading, practical issues may have been lost sight of in substituting the three months lost—essentially, April, May and June—with three months gained: January, February and March. The most obvious, which I mentioned on Second Reading, is that the industry has lost three months of prime building season in the middle of late spring and early summer and is receiving, by way of compensation, time in the middle of winter. We do not know what seasonal effects January, February and March 2021 will have but if they were particularly inimical to development, it would mean quite a significant deficit in the opportunity for development. From my conversations with housebuilders it is not the case that on returning to site, generally in late June, they were able to do so on the basis of achieving full capacity. Many were starting at 50% capacity; those who I talked to only a week ago were generally at 80% capacity. The pipeline will have lost a further few weeks by the end of December. Adding that together, one might say “If not three months, perhaps four—or even five”. It depends on how one looks at it.
My noble friend Lord Howe has very helpfully said that in any case, all one needed to do is to implement a planning permission. He said: “Digging a trench or pegging out a road may suffice”. I have to tell him that I have looked into this and the courts have often taken a view about what commencement might be. Digging a trench might be sufficient; pegging out a road probably is not. The point is that neither takes account of two significant additional factors. First, when one commences development, often one also commences a legal obligation for community infrastructure levy, so significant costs may then arise. One does not commence a development simply by digging a trench, walking away and saying, “I’ve done what the planning permission requires”. That is not sufficient and, in the eyes of many developers, would be quite an unwise thing for them to do. Secondly, one cannot simply commence development until one has received the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions.
I checked with the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning service and as of the beginning of last week, on 6 July, it began to look at applications received on 15 April for the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions. That is a 10-week delay. Of course, discharge of conditions under these circumstances would generally take eight weeks, so there is an 18-week potential delay. When one begins to add these things together—they are not necessarily in series but may be concurrent—none the less it is far from obvious, in my view, that these particular three months at the beginning of next year are a sufficient addition to the time which developers need to compensate for the time they are losing in the course of 2020.
My point here is that my practical view was, “Let’s add two months”. In this respect, I shared the exact view—which I reflected in asking my noble friend some weeks ago whether he would add six months to planning permissions beyond the end of December—of the Home Builders Federation. It has welcomed what the Government are doing and is grateful for their bringing forward this legislation, but in fact asked for 1 July, not 1 April. I have not asked for 1 July; I have asked for 1 June. I think there is a practical answer somewhere beyond 1 April, in the light of all the circumstances.
Lord Greenhalgh
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lansley for speaking to this group of amendments which relate to the extension of planning permissions and listed building consents. These amendments have been supported by my noble friend Lord Balfe. Let me begin by saying that this is a very unusual and challenging time for the development industry, and we recognise that many developers of residential and commercial buildings have had to pause projects.
First, I recognise my noble friend’s comment that the proposed extension for those permissions and consents due to lapse close to 31 December 2020 will represent an extension of only three months, and I take his point about the quality of those three months. However, where a planning permission is due to lapse earlier in the year, for example in September, it would benefit from an automatic extension of closer to seven months. This, we believe, is proportionate.
Secondly, we should be clear that these measures to extend planning permissions and listed building consents are intended to support developers to implement their permissions—that is, to make a start on site—as we know that many of them will have experienced disruptions or delays due to the pandemic. However, it need not take very extensive works to implement a planning permission, and we think it is reasonable to expect starts on site to take place by 1 April 2021. I note my noble friend’s points about the community infrastructure levy, but we have made provisions so that the payment can be deferred and I am sure we will see improvements with regard to the current delays in the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions.
Finally, my noble friend will be aware that we have included powers to extend, by regulations, both the 31 December 2020 date and the 1 April 2021 date to allow more or longer extensions, should that become appropriate. I am happy once again to commit to my noble friend on the Floor of your Lordships’ House that I would be pleased to engage with him on this matter in the coming months as we better understand how the industry is recovering from the impacts of the pandemic.
My noble friend also spoke to Amendments 59, 62, 66 and 68 to Clauses 17 and 18 in relation to the scope of the additional environmental approval process. These amendments would shift the cut-off date for those permissions which require additional environmental approval in order to be extended to April 2021. This date is currently set at the date these provisions take effect, which is four weeks after Royal Assent. My noble friend’s amendment would shift this to 25 June 2020 to cover just planning permissions that have expired. He will understand that where planning permission has lapsed, an extension effectively reinstates the permission, thereby permitting something that otherwise would not be allowed to go ahead. So it is right in those circumstances, having regard to our environmental commitments and obligations, to check whether the existing environmental assessments are still up to date. However, it is important that these provisions capture not only permissions which have actually lapsed, but those which, while technically still extant as of now, in practice could not be implemented within their original time limit. That is why it is right that there is a short delay between this Bill achieving Royal Assent and the cut-off date when these provisions take effect.
Developers with a permission that has not yet expired, but which is due to do so before these provisions take effect, still have the option to implement their planning permissions now, if they can. This would avoid any need to apply for additional environmental approval. If they cannot, it is right that before an extension is granted, there should be a check on whether the requisite environmental assessments remain up to date. The process for doing so is not burdensome, is focused and would be free of charge for applicants.
I hope that with this assurance my noble friend will feel able to withdraw Amendment 59 and will not press the others in this group.
Lord Lansley
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Balfe and the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Wilcox, for their contributions to the debate and for their positive remarks. I am also grateful to the Minister for his response. He demonstrated that he is trying to work this through as a practical issue. There are powers in the Bill to change the dates for the extension later on by way of regulation. I will consider what he said in his reply before we think about this on Report. It seems to me that if we recognise the strength of the case we should perhaps reflect it in the Bill to some extent, but there may be other and better ways of achieving that than in my amendments to date. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.