Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer the strongest possible Green support for Motion J1 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I have stepped out of an important Peers for the Planet ecocide meeting to do this because at the Green Party conference and in consultation with the National Association of Local Councils and the Local Government Association—I declare my position as a vice-president of both—I was lobbied again and again. It was the biggest topic that came up. People are very concerned about how many people are being excluded from being local councillors by the Government’s failure to adopt a simple, common-sense measure.

In surveys by the LGA and the NALC, over 90% of councils at all levels supported this—and here we are talking about parish and town councils as well as higher-level councils. In the NALC survey, a third of respondents knew of councillors who had stood down since May 2021 due to the return to person-only meetings. Of those, one in five cited childcare commitments as one of their top four reasons for wanting to attend meetings virtually. So this is very much a gender issue. We have a huge problem with the underrepresentation of women in councils. Allowing this simple measure would be a big step forward. Reflecting that, Mumsnet is calling for the return of virtual meetings through its Keep Council Meetings Accessible campaign and a change.org petition has more than 11,000 signatures.

I have one final thought. The Government often like to say, “We want to learn from business and do things the way business does”. Over the past few years, business air travel has dropped by over 50% and there has also been a huge drop in business rail travel. People in business are operating remotely. It is a huge democratic block to not allow these meetings under tight rules. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, the Government can put all kinds of tight rules on this. It is a very modest measure and a step for practicality and democracy. As is reflected by the two sides that have spoken on this, this is not a party-political point; it is point of practicality.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene on this group to make two points, one on Motion F1 and one on Motion J1. I am prompted on Motion F1 by what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was asking about South Cambridgeshire. I declare an interest as I am chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and used to be the Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire.

To set this in context, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority is a mayoral combined authority and is not intending to be a county combined authority, but this does prompt a question. One of the essential problems with a mayoral combined authority is the difficulty of there being both a combined and a county authority infrastructure. For many people in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, this is too confused and duplicatory a structure.

For the sake of argument—this is not one that has been advanced in Cambridgeshire, but it might be—let us say that it moves from a mayoral to a county combined authority. As the legislation is presently constructed, one could clearly not do that as it would, in effect, disempower district councils in the process. So if my noble friend Lord Howe is saying that the nature of a county combined authority requires that it is for upper-tier authorities only—in this context, the county and Peterborough, and not the district councils—and if the local devolution settlement were found to be unsatisfactory and a change were desired locally, why are there no legislative provisions to allow that to happen? That is the question I put to my noble friend.

Secondly, I support my noble friend Lady McIntosh. Her Amendment 22B very reasonably says that the Government may make regulations relating to remote participation in local government meetings. That creates an opportunity for Ministers to think about this and, if necessary, move slowly. It is clearly not their wish to move rapidly but, without dwelling on the detail, there are physical, demographic and personal circumstances that mean that members may wish or need to participate in meetings remotely. Frankly, there might also be meetings where there is a relatively modest need for everybody to come together. As we know, there can sometimes be large numbers of meetings in local government that are not places where large numbers of votes happen and it would be perfectly reasonable for Ministers to enable such meetings to take place remotely. Given the permissive nature of Amendment 22B, which my noble friend has put forward, it is rather surprising that she was not able to find a compromise.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion J1 and then Motion ZE1. I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. There is one element that has not yet been discussed, which is that this House allows for hybrid meetings of its committees. Now, you have to say to yourself, if it is right and proper for this House to enable Members to take part virtually in its committees, why is it not possible for local democracy to have the same rights? The arguments have been made for inclusivity—or, as it will be, exclusivity if the Government unfortunately fail to hear the arguments that have been made.

I will point to one example, which I think shows the strength of the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. The Government have, in their wisdom, created new unitary authorities, one of which is North Yorkshire. Now, North Yorkshire is a very large area to be in one unitary authority. It also does not have the best of weather in the winter. So, if you live towards the south or even the east of the area, because the county council headquarters is more or less in the middle—so it is useful in that sense—you will have a round trip of over 100 miles to go to a council meeting. If, as often is the case, you have to go across the Yorkshire Dales or the North York moors, where roads are impassable, you will be excluded from the meetings—not because you want to be excluded but because the weather is excluding you. And, if you are not able to drive, I can tell you now that you would simply not be able to get to a meeting in Northallerton in the heart of North Yorkshire.

For those reasons alone, it seems to me practical that the Government should allow for flexibility for local government to make those sorts of decisions, to enhance local democracy and be more inclusive. So we support the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh in her quest to enable hybrid meetings to take place.

I turn to Motion ZE1. It is a travesty of local democracy if a fundamental change to the constitution of a combined authority—which is what we are considering in the instance of the West Midlands combined authority—can be made without a full consultation and involvement of all those who wish to have their voices heard. I live in West Yorkshire, so I can absolutely confirm what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said: that at the heart of the discussions was the combination of the two roles of mayor and PCC. Not all of us agreed, but the outcome was as it was. The consequence of combining those two roles in West Yorkshire and in the Manchester combined authority is that we elect a mayor and then the mayor appoints one of their colleagues to be police and crime commissioner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly to speak to three Motions in this group—first, Motion ZH, to which the noble Lord, Lord Best, has just spoken. It is the substitute for an amendment on housing need that he promoted on Report. There is a crucial difference between the original amendment, which required local authorities not just to assess need but to make provision for it. The Government’s amendment deletes that last half—making provision for need. None the less, we have heard some encouraging words about social rent. It is a brave man who seeks to outbid the noble Lord, Lord Best, when it comes to speaking or voting on amendments on housing, so I am happy to follow his lead and not press that. I pay tribute to the work that he has been doing on this.

Secondly, it was disappointing to hear my noble friend Lord Howe say that Motion N1 on healthy homes, from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, still had to be resisted. Ever since the Private Member’s Bill was introduced, we have had numerous debates in Committee and on Report, and each time, in response, the noble Lord has moved further and further towards the Government. There never was a wide disagreement, because the Government always said that they agreed with the thrust of what he was trying to do.

It is worth reading out what may be the only sentence of the original amendment that remains:

“The Secretary of State must promote a comprehensive regulatory framework for planning and the built environment designed to secure the physical, mental and social health and well-being of the people of England by ensuring the creation of healthy homes and neighbourhoods”.


That is apparently too much. It continues:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for a system of standards”.


In other words, how that objective is reached is left entirely to the Secretary of State. Far from cutting across, as my noble friend Lord Howe said, the amendment seeks to bring it all together under a comprehensive framework to promote healthy homes.

The last point I want to make is on Motion R1 of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It repeats an amendment that I originally proposed in Committee that gives local authorities powers to fix their own planning fees. In the other place, the amendment was resisted on these grounds:

“It will lead to inconsistency of fees between local planning authorities and does not provide any incentive to tackle inefficiencies”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/23; col 186.]


Central government should be quite careful before it preaches to local government about inefficiencies. This is the month in which we abandoned most of HS2. Pick up any NAO report and you will find criticism of the MoD on procurement. There has been criticism of the new hospitals programme and of HMRC in its response to taxpayer inquiries. If I were running a planning department in a local authority, I would be slightly miffed if I were told that, if I had the resources I needed, it might lead to inefficiencies.

There are problems in planning departments, but they are because a quarter of planners left the public sector between 2013 and 2020, so of course they cannot turn around planning applications as speedily as they might. The argument about promoting inefficiency does not really hold water. If one were to take that argument, why stop at planning fees? What about taking books out of a public library, swimming or parking? Are these not areas where local authorities might conceivably be inefficient?

Almost the first sentence of the White Paper introducing the Bill said that it would promote a “revolution in local democracy”, but allowing planning departments to set fees, so that they can recoup the costs of planning, is apparently a step too far. Yes, you will have inconsistency of fees, but that will happen if you have local democracy. We already have inconsistency of fees in every other charge a local authority makes, including building control fees. The argument that it will somehow confuse individuals or developers does not hold water. How many individuals make planning applications to a range of different local authorities and then express surprise that the fees are different? Yes, developers will be confronted with different fees, but they want an efficient planning department that processes their applications quickly.

I cannot understand why the Government are digging in their heels on this amendment, which empowers local government and gives them resources. It does not get resources at the moment because, in a unitary authority, the planning department, which does not get enough money from planning fees, has to bid for resources from the council tax in competition against adult social care and other services. It is no wonder that it misses out. At this very late stage on the Bill, I ask my noble friend whether the Government could show a little ankle on this, move a little towards empowering local government and trust it to get this right.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening before the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has a chance to speak to Motion R1, but I have to disagree with my noble friend on this occasion. Last week, we had a debate on planning fees, in which I participated. The risk in what the noble Baroness proposes is that it would lead to local authorities significantly increasing the fees that would be charged for householder applications.

I remind the House that I chair the Cambridgeshire development forum. As far as larger developers are concerned, the point I made last week is that we should promote planning performance agreements to enable local authorities and developers to come to proper agreements, with potential sanctions and performance obligations on the part of the local planning authority. They would give them access to greater resources in dealing with major developments. I fear that what the Liberal Democrat Front Bench proposes would just lead to increases in fees for householder applications.

I also want to say a word about Motion M1 on climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, knows that I thoroughly agree with what he proposes but, at this stage, sending back the same amendments is inherently undesirable if it can be avoided. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will tell us more about how the Government will use the new national development management policies, which will have statutory backing. If the Government set down NDMPs in terms that are clear about the importance of decisions that take account of mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, they will have the effect that my noble friend and other Members of the House look for from this Motion.

The distinctive point of the original Amendment 45 was that it would extend specific consideration of mitigation of and adaptation to climate change to individual planning decisions—there is plenty in the statute about the application of this to plan-making—so that is where the gap lies. That gap can be filled if national development management policies are absolutely clear about how decisions are to be made on the impact of climate change. I hope that my noble friend says something that allows me to feel that we do not need to send the same Amendment 45 back to the other place.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Earl most sincerely for the time he has spent with me and my colleagues in discussions about these issues. They were, of course, of great interest to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, and I repeat my good wishes to her for a speedy recovery.

It is not often that you get a Motion both agreed and disagreed with before it is proposed, but here we go. I will speak to Motion R1, about planning fees, which is in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for his support. He has made the powerful case in favour of enabling local authorities to determine their planning fees to cover costs: no more, no less.

--- Later in debate ---

That principle is wrong. Why should council tax payers help to subsidise applications from, for instance, major housebuilders? Why should they—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness, but surely we discovered from the documentation that came with the statutory instrument last week that after the increase in fees, the great majority of that subsidy would be to householder applications? What the noble Baroness is looking for is for householder application fees in effect to be doubled.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for his comment. What we did discover, and I have the papers with me, was that there would still be a subsidy for major applications—that was in the papers—and that there would be a subsidy for householder applications. But the case I make is this: if householders wish to add an extension to their house or improve it in some other way, then there is a cost to that, of which the planning application fee is a minor part. Why should their next-door neighbour subsidise it? I do not think it is a just or fair way of spending taxpayers’ money. If we told them that this was happening, I think they would be as cross as I am.

We need to recover costs because the principle that I have just outlined, but also because without local planning authorities being fully resourced, they will not turn around the situation that is well recorded by professional bodies, by the Local Government Association and by the Government in the papers that we had for the statutory instrument last week—that there is a significant shortfall in planning officers in local government because of the lack of resources. If we are going to reverse that, local planning authorities need to be properly resourced, so that in a plan-led system we have experienced and well-qualified planners who have the responsibility of ensuring that local and national plans are respected.

The only other point I want to make on this issue is this: many councils across the country are under severe financial pressure—let us put it like that. Some, as we heard from Birmingham, which was the latest council, are on the brink of having insufficient resources to fulfil their statutory obligations. Particularly in those circumstances, it seems quite wrong to expect councils to use council tax payer funding to subsidise planning applications, hence my continuing pursuit of a fair and just planning application fee process.

I suppose my final point on this is to totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, when he asks why on earth in a local democracy cannot local government have the right, responsibility and duty to set its own fees? It does on everything else, so why not on that? I will push this to a vote if the noble Earl fails to agree with me and others’ powerful speeches on this.

On the other amendments, I endorse the “healthy homes” Motion that the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has pushed again today. He is absolutely right: why do we continue building places that produce problems, when we could solve it from the outset? If the noble Lord wishes to press his Motion, he will get our full support, as will the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for his Motion on climate change. He is absolutely right; it is an existential threat to our country. We must take it seriously, and here is one area of policy where we can be seen to be doing that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. I will reiterate two points very quickly, recognising the lateness of the hour.

The first point is that implementation is not the boring, straightforward part after the smart policy people have done their work. Too often in government, that is how it is viewed. Implementation is really hard. My world of digital has taught us that thinking of implementation as something that comes after is the wrong way to do it; instead, you should think of things as entirely iterative. In an agile way, you should continually be testing and learning in a cross-disciplinary, user-focused way. That is what the digital world does every day, but it is also what brilliant regeneration work does every day.

I hugely support the principles of these amendments, partly because of that first point and partly because I have also seen—in both the NHS and the Covid response—that it is only when we have all sectors of society working together on implementation that we get real change. We need the public, commercial, private and third sectors working collaboratively on the ground. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has been doing this for 30 years in Bromley-by-Bow, but we saw it on the ground across the whole country in our much-vaunted vaccination programme. What was truly brilliant about it was the genuine local, cross-societal engagement in reaching the people who were most vulnerable and most in need of getting those first jabs. That was implementation at its very best.

I have a simple question for my noble friend the Minister: if the Government will not accept these amendments, can she assure us that they really do appreciate how important implementation is? Also, if they do, how will she ensure that the good ideas in this Bill are not just passed on to someone else—that is, for someone else to think about how to do them—but are continually iterated so that we learn how they can best be implemented?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe about this. But this is not a fire-and-forget piece of legislation; in the levelling-up part, it has its own metrics. The metrics are all there in the White Paper.

I want to add two requests. The first is that this is not good enough: we are two general elections away from 2030, when it is intended that these metrics are reported. That is too far away. We need a sense of what is being done, how it is being achieved and the progress being made.

Secondly, we have talked a number of times about the advisory council on levelling up. We now know that it has a work plan and some of the subjects that it will address. Some will be very useful—for example, understanding precisely what the Government’s intentions are for investment zones would be useful to people in many parts of the country.

In place of Andy Haldane giving interviews in which he says, “It’s all a mixed bag”, we actually want some of these subjects to be reported by the advisory council, transparently and openly. It is important that Ministers engage with the advisory councils, but they should not be purely internal. As the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, rightly said, they should enable those charged with levelling up across the country to see what the Government are doing, why they are doing it and what progress is being achieved. I hope that my noble friend will say more about the transparency of the advisory council.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

The legislative framework has to give nature some teeth or we will continue to see more declines of our species, habitats and communities across the English landscape. If we are serious about meeting targets such as 30 by 30, it is critical that we move and act quickly now. Therefore, I see both these amendments as really important, because they start to raise the profile of our green belt beyond just being a legislative or planning requirement that was set up many years ago to something that properly recognises what we have in our green belt and why we need to conserve it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, forgive me: I do not have an amendment in this group and I do not want to delay the point when we arrive at my further amendments, but I want to say something about green-belt policy. I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, because I come from outside Cambridge and she lived in Cambridge, at one time, and now lives now in Oxford, if I am correct. Looking at the green belt by reference to Oxford and Cambridge is an interesting way to approach these things, and I want to do it by reference to the Cambridge green belt in particular.

After the noble Baroness left Cambridge, we lived with precisely the consequences that she described. For 25 years, until about 2000-01, all the development that was required for Cambridge was happening in villages outside Cambridge and generally beyond the green belt. There are many people who will say that it is all very well to talk about reviewing the green belt, looking at green-belt land and whether it should be in or out the green belt, but they are not politicians and they do not have to live with the consequences of reviewing the green belt. Well, I was a politician when we agreed to review the green belt in the run-up to the strategic plan review in 2006, if I remember correctly. Not only did we review the green belt and sustain that through an examination in public, but we successfully reshaped the green belt around Cambridge such that, in the years since, a much larger proportion of the development that is required for Cambridge has happened in the green belt. Some of it has actually delivered access to the countryside that was never available before.

That firmly focused our minds on the purposes of the green belt. For example, we retained green corridors running into Cambridge. Those familiar with Cambridge will realise that, if they come into the centre through Trumpington, they will continue to see countryside reaching right to the centre of Cambridge itself. That was not lost. However, the review acknowledged the requirement for the release of land not primarily for residential purposes but for the purpose of building the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. If we had not reviewed the green belt, the biomedical campus south of Cambridge, around Addenbrooke’s Hospital and what is now Royal Papworth Hospital, and their related research institutes, would not have been able to be built. That would have been an immense loss to the UK economy and life sciences sector.

The point I am making is that understanding when to retain the boundaries of the green belt, when to review them and under what circumstances that review should conclude that the boundaries should be changed is a vital part of planning policy. We should not leave it out. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and other noble Lords remember from other debates that I am firmly of the opinion that this legislation should be used to give a stronger statutory basis to the environmental purposes of planning, including—one of my earlier amendments did this—in respect to nature recovery and biodiversity gain.

However, I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that I think it is inappropriate to extend green-belt purposes to the features that she has in Amendment 295, because that would create a different statutory basis for planning policy on green-belt land, as opposed to greenfield or any other available land for development. It would entrench the idea that there is something different about green-belt land from other land.

Of course it is permanent, but I remember back in the early 2000s when I asked what permanent meant in relation to the green belt. The answer, I was told, was 25 years. If it is permanent now, we are talking about land that should stay in the green belt until 2050, more or less. That is when we are supposed to achieve net zero—in fact, before then, as our Green colleagues regularly tell us and would tell us now if they were with us. We have to think about the consequences we expect for our land use strategies if we are to achieve net zero between now and 2050.

For example, I have mentioned Cambridge City Council’s environmental assessment before it commenced the review of its local plan. It showed that it requires a significant increase in the density of development in urban areas and development to be focused on public transport corridors. Let us look at where the public transport corridors are, for example around London. I come from Essex: if you go out into the countryside on the Central line, you go through the green belt, but you do so on a public transport corridor on which there is effectively no development. We have to look very carefully and ask whether that is sustainable. The principle of sustainable development is at the heart of planning, and the boundaries of the green belt should be subject to the principle of sustainable development and assessed against the purposes set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

As I mention the NPPF for the 98th time in these debates, it would be jolly helpful for the Government to tell us what precisely they plan to say in the NPPF and in the national development management policies in future. I come back to chapter 13 of the draft NPPF, which has two parts to it: one is effectively about setting policy for the green belt, which is about setting its boundaries, and the second is about the policies that should apply to the determination of an application for development within the green belt. The latter should be a national development management policy and the former should not: it should continue to be part of what is effectively the overall guidance from the Secretary of State for plan making. My noble friend sent me a letter following a previous debate but did not clarify precisely that division. I think we need to know, as a very clear example of what is or is not an NDMP. It is an important basis for our future debates on Report.

I am sorry that Ministers thought it appropriate to propose a change to the NPPF to include the sentence:

“Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”.


I do not know why they have inserted it and I do not see the benefit of it. In those local authorities that consist very largely of green belt—and there are some—it will effectively remove from them the obligation to play their part at all in the provision of housing to meet assessed need. I suspect that the same will be true of the requirements for employment and commercial-related development. As I see it, this has no place. Sustainable development should be the principle, and this sentence effectively absolves those local planning authorities of the responsibility to pursue sustainable development in their areas. I hope that, even at this stage, when they look at the responses to the NPPF consultation, Ministers will recognise that this is inappropriate language to use in relation to green-belt boundary setting.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, this short debate has revealed that tension at the heart of planning policy and, indeed, political debate: what is the relative priority for environmental imperatives on the one hand and for housing on the other? What the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, described as covering land with concrete is, for some people, providing families with decent homes. That is the balance we have to make.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, opened this debate by asking what the green belt is for. Her amendment outlines nine criteria and purposes for the green belt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, came up with some more criteria. I turn that question the other way around: if a piece of land meets none of the nine criteria in the amendment or those mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, but happens to be designated as green belt, should it remain designated? I am all in favour of expanding the green belt if it meets these criteria and others, but there are bits of the green belt that fulfil none of them.

My noble friend Lord Lansley referred to the document put out on 22 December on reforms to national planning policy. One of the questions was:

“Do you agree that national policy should make clear that Green Belt does not need to be reviewed or altered when making plans?”.


The answer is that I do not agree. As my noble friend said, that gives a let-out, but it also prevents the optimum use of land that is needed for housing.

I hope that, if we do come up with positive policies and descriptions of the objectives to be fulfilled by the green belt, we will look very critically at bits of the green belt that do not meet those criteria. There have been award-winning housing schemes built on what were green belts. We may need more of them if we are to hit our target of 300,000 homes a year. Along with my noble friend Lord Lansley, I think that there are other considerations to take into account when striking the appropriate balance between the environment on one hand and the need for decent homes on the other.

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[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am happy to support the amendments that have just been moved.

I remind the Committee that in earlier debates we spent quite a lot of time on the importance of creating an environment that is clean and healthy for people to live in—the noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular encouraged us to do that—while earlier today we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about the vital need to protect woodland and biodiversity more widely. The Minister responded that none of this required her amendments because, he pointed out, the planning system was there and the planners could be “proactive” in using tree preservation orders and measures regarding biodiversity powers.

That is all well and good, but with one problem: the vast majority of councils responsible for taking these proactive measures are short of planners. There is a huge shortage. Where we have an amendment that relies on there being sufficient skills, resources and capabilities to deliver all these things, we already know from the research that has been done that there is a significant shortage. Noble Lords do not have to listen to me to know that; the chief planner in the Minister’s own department has said categorically that there are not enough planners in local government in England. Joanna Averley went on to say, at the end of last year, that the department did not have the funds to provide resources for there to be more planners. My question for the Minister is: what is going to be done to increase the number of planners to carry out all the work that he keeps referring to and which will come about as a result of the Bill before us?

I want to place on record a huge tribute to the RTPI for the work it is doing to try to improve skills. It has its degree-level apprenticeship scheme, as I am sure the Minister is aware, and a number of other measures, but we are in a situation where it is now said that planners are like gold dust.

The situation is compounded by a further problem. Another amendment talks about what the role of chief planning officers should be. Again, that would be well and good if there were any chief planning officers to have a role. The truth is that we now have a situation where one-quarter of councils in England do not have a head of planning reporting directly to a chief executive. There is a real shortage, which has the knock-on implication that there tends not to be a career structure to encourage people to enter at the bottom end. The shortage of planners is exacerbated by the shortage of chief planning officers.

I want to use this amendment as an opportunity gently to ask the Minister what the Government’s plans are to resolve the resource shortage, which we do not need a review of because we already know it is there. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, at this late hour I do not want to speak at any great length. I declare an interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In that context, we are acutely aware of the shortage of planners in local authority planning departments, despite the efforts made, not least by Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council in bringing together their two planning services to try to ensure efficiency in both planning and the use of resources.

There is a shortage, so we looked at working with the RTPI’s young planners group and with Anglia Ruskin University, so that some of those degree apprenticeship placements would be in Cambridge, in addition to those in Chelmsford. That might bring more of those young planners into the Cambridge area, where we hope they will stay, working in businesses and local authorities locally.

One thing we have looked at, which is possible but not easy to do, is the development community entering into, effectively, area-wide planning performance agreements with a local planning authority. Such planning performance agreements are entered into generally in relation to individual developments and can be the subject of additional charges for things such as pre-application advice. Of course, that is purely on a cost-recovery basis. Once you begin to attribute charging and costs to individual developments, even though from the planning authority’s point of view it does not influence the outcome of any of the decision-making, there is a risk that that is what people perceive to be the case.

To try to avoid the risk of any attribution of resources to results in terms of the integrity and transparency of the planning decision-making, we and the development community want to look at the ability to assist in resourcing planning for major developments in the area, and to do so in a way independent of the individual applications and the individual developer. I hope that, when Ministers think about how we might increase resources, they will recognise this as one possible arrangement.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as London’s Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience and chair of the London Resilience Forum. I just want to say, briefly, that I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Kennedy, particularly on Amendment 504E. I got quite excited when he showed it to me. If an amendment can be described as exciting, this one would match that criterion.

An office for risk and resilience would provide a focus and play an invaluable part in ensuring that this country is better prepared to deal with the many risks we face, not least in relation to climate change. If we need to do anything through this legislation, it is to ensure that the buildings and infrastructure being built now are still fit for purpose in a decade, two decades or 50 years’ time. At the moment, we cannot guarantee that this is the case. We should note that resilience is particularly relevant to the concept of levelling up, as inevitably those individuals or institutions with better resources are inherently more resilient. I urge the Minister and the Government to consider this amendment seriously.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lady Hayman, who performed an excellent destruction of this clause. Other noble Lords have said much the same thing. I have one question for the Minister, because this is all about the Crown, but I cannot see any definition in the clause of who “the Crown” is. There are other definitions in other parts of the Bill, which include the Duchy of Cornwall, which I shall come on to in the next amendment, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Crown Estate. It makes me think that what we are really trying to do is to go back to a time when we had “the Crown” in the shape of Henry VIII, who could do more or less what he wanted. This seems a very good start to the Government’s plan to give Henry VIII, in the shape of whoever is in charge at the time, carte blanche to do what they want.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Before we hear from my noble friend, I want to say that Section 293 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines what is Crown land and goes on to make it clear what is an appropriate authority for the purposes of what is being introduced in Section 293B, down to and including,

“in relation to Westminster Hall and the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft … the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Speakers of the House of Lords and the House of Commons acting jointly”

being the appropriate authority.

I want to ask my noble friend about something because I simply do not understand it. There is an existing Section 293A, which as it stands is called “Urgent Crown development: application”; it has almost the same name as new Section 293B. I completely understand that the existing legislation does not appear to include all the provisions relating to how the Secretary of State deals with such an application and how the Secretary of State might give permission, so it is probably defective. But then I do not understand why all this is being added in and Section 293A is not being repealed. Perhaps my noble friend can explain that to me.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, looking first at this clause as a totality, I will begin by explaining briefly the purpose of the proposed measure. The purpose of Clause 101 is to update the existing provisions for development by the Crown that is of national importance and required urgently by providing a new, faster, more effective and efficient route for seeking planning permission. It also provides a new route for nationally important development that is not urgent. The objective of these reforms is to ensure that planning decisions can be made in a timely and proportionate way on development that is of national importance and is promoted by the Crown.

Let me banish what I have perceived from this debate is a misconception. A special urgency procedure for urgent and nationally important Crown development has existed in legislation for many years. The purpose of the clause is to update this route so it can be used more effectively to deal with urgent national crises and supplement it with a new route for making a planning decision for non-urgent planned Crown development which is of national importance.

The Government believe that, where a Crown development is of genuine national significance, the Secretary of State, who is democratically accountable to Parliament, should be able to make a planning decision rather than an individual local planning authority answerable to its local community. The Secretary of State is best placed to take a national, balanced and impartial view of the need for development.

Let me explain that nationally important but non-urgent applications will still be considered against the plan-led approach we advocate through the Bill, and local communities will be given their opportunity to give their views and have these taken into account. Again, there is precedent for this type of approach within Section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act, where planning applications can be submitted directly to the Secretary of State. It is thought that this route would be suitable for development such as new prisons and extensions to the defence estate.

All sorts of hares have been set running on this provision, and it is most important for me to emphasise that the urgent route that we are introducing would be used sparingly where—and only where—it can be demonstrated that development is needed urgently and is nationally important. Those are high bars, but the route could, for example, be used for development needed on Crown land to develop medical centres in the event of a pandemic. Such development will need to be operational in a matter of weeks so decisions can be made very quickly. Other examples could include accommodation needed urgently in the event of a future influx of refugees, or military training facilities.

I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Hodgson for at least part of what he said, if not for all of it. Press reports have been misleading on the issue of housing illegal migrants. As I have said, the power can be used only for Crown development which is of both national importance and needed urgently. As I have said, this is a high bar, and Crown bodies making an application will need to justify that using this route is appropriate.

This does not concern any situation that we may currently be facing on illegal migrants. In the first place, it is worth bearing in mind that this power will not take effect straightaway, contrary to reports in the press. The Bill needs to finish its passage through Parliament and then we will need to lay regulations and produce guidance before this can properly be brought into force. That will take time. To this end, it may not be a suitable route for the immediate issue of housing of migrants to address the current immigration backlogs. In the case of asylum accommodation on MoD bases, it will be for the Home Secretary to decide whether to bring forward an application when the powers are in place.

We recognise that the procedure for this urgent route is not the same as the more commonly known statutory procedure for determining planning applications. It is therefore, I say again, a route that will be used sparingly. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that those promoting the development must clearly demonstrate that there is an urgent need for the development, that timely decisions cannot be delivered by other planning routes and that it is therefore in the wider public interest that the planning decision is accelerated using the new procedure.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

258B: Clause 102, page 130, line 28, at end insert—
“(5A) Where a subsequent planning permission (Permission B) is for localised changes to a wider development approved in the existing permission (Permission A), which would not have the effect of rendering the implementation of the Permission A physically impossible, the implementation of permission B does not preclude future reliance upon Permission A (in relation to existing or future development) outside of the area to which permission B relates.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would support the continuation of “drop-in” permissions in large-scale developments, while maintaining the “Pilkington” principle, that they must not render the original permission physically impossible.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. This group relates to planning permissions. There are a number of different amendments for different purposes and perhaps noble Lords will forgive me if I speak only to my Amendment 258B, which has a particular purpose. It seeks to provide a clear, statutory provision in relation to an area of planning law that has recently become uncertain and which if not clarified would create a number of costly and difficult consequences both for developers and planning authorities.

I will explain the background. The issue relates to large developments which are built out over a significant period; they are developments which have had a full planning permission. Of course, if development proceeds in phases with outline permission, or with a hybrid mix of outline and full permissions for different phases, the scope for varying a large development can be adjusted over time—but I am talking here about developments with full planning permission. In relation to those, it is clear that variations to that full planning permission are limited. Section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 permits variations to a planning permission that are not material. Clause 102 of the Bill seeks to insert into that Act a new subsection (5) stating that planning permission may be granted in relation to an existing permission

“only if the local planning authority is satisfied that its effect will not be substantially different from that of the existing permission”.

That is not quite the same as the existing law; it is a step forward, but a very modest step in that direction. However, the issue is where a developer seeks permission within the boundary of an existing large-scale development for a significant variation to the plan. What happens where two permissions exist together in relation to the same site?

This matter arises in relation to what is known as the Hillside judgment—Hillside Parks Ltd v Snowdonia National Park Authority—to which I will return soon. The Supreme Court judgment was given in November last year, so it is quite recent. In paragraph 28, it said:

“There is … no provision of the legislation which regulates the situation where two or more planning permissions granted for development on the same site are, or are claimed to be … inconsistent. The courts have therefore had to work out the principles to be applied”.


The key case in this respect, up until now, has been Pilkington v Secretary of State for the Environment. I will not dwell on the two bungalows and the smallholding which were the subject of that case. Lord Widgery, in his judgment, stated that the test would consider

“whether it is possible to carry out the development proposed in that second permission, having regard to that which was done or authorised to be done under the permission which has been implemented”.

In a sense, what Pilkington established was the idea that permission could not continue to be valid where it had become physically impossible to implement it by virtue of a subsequent planning permission that has been consented. However, that has tended, over time, to imply that, where it is not physically impossible to fulfil an existing planning permission, it would remain valid, notwithstanding that there is an additional permission in relation to part of the site. So the general expectation has been that, where permissions relate to the same site, the issue is whether the implementation of one renders the other physically incapable of implementation. If it does, the approval of the latter would render the former invalid; if it did not, the former permission would not be invalidated.

I turn now to the Supreme Court judgment of the Hillside case in November last year. An issue for the appellants—Hillside Parks Ltd—was that the Court of Appeal had held that the original planning permission for the whole site could not be interpreted as separable. Paragraph 71 of the judgment of the Supreme Court justices said:

“We agree with the view expressed by the Court of Appeal in this case that where, as here, a planning permission is granted for the development of a site, such as a housing estate, comprising multiple units, it is unlikely to be the correct interpretation of the permission that it is severable”.


Consequently, if a permission were implemented in relation to a part of a larger site, even if the rest of the original permission could be completed, the fact that the whole original permission could not be completed would render the original permission no longer valid.

The problems that arise from this were summarised in submissions to the Supreme Court by counsel for the appellants who submitted that it would cause serious practical inconvenience if a developer who, when carrying out a large development, encountered a local difficulty or wished for other reasons to depart from the approved scheme in one particular area of the site, cannot obtain permission to do so without losing the benefit of the original permission and having to apply for a fresh planning permission for the remaining development on other parts of the site. The Supreme Court justices took the view that that was indeed the legal position: that where a developer had been granted a full planning permission for one entire scheme and wished to depart from it in a material way, it is a consequence of the very limited powers that a local planning authority has to make changes that a full new permission would be required.

I am very grateful to the Home Builders Federation, which supplied a full briefing after I tabled the amendment. It supplemented my knowledge quite a bit. I hope noble Lords have received its briefing, which included several case studies to show how these consequences of the Hillside judgment last November could create cost, delay and disruption to development in large sites. I am not proposing to go through the case studies. I hope noble Lords will understand that at this late hour that would not be terribly helpful. It implies, however, with a series of examples, that the cost of a new, full application with all the attendant documentation, such as environmental impact assessments for a whole site, would be a very costly and time-consuming consequence.

Local planning authorities will not easily resource new large-scale applications for sites which they had regarded as already consented. It could mean that opportunities for desired changes, such as, in one example, to give a small builder access to part of a larger development, would not be offered if they would put the whole scheme at risk. I do not think we can even get into how difficult the community infrastructure levy or, in future, the infrastructure levy, would be to calculate in relation to such further planning permissions relating to the whole existing site. The uncertainty of whether the permission for a large site might be rendered invalid would be a serious risk to the effective delivery of major sites. Only immaterial changes on a large site would be regarded as safe: everything else would put it all at risk.

My objective in Amendment 258A is to give a straightforward statutory provision which would re-establish the position as it had been understood, i.e. that only if a subsequent permission renders the completion of an original permission physically impossible would the earlier permission be invalidated and—perhaps even more important by contrast—if it does not render the original permission physically impossible on the rest of the site, the earlier permission may continue to be relied upon in relation to the rest of that site, i.e. excluding the area to which the subsequent permission has been applied.

I am very grateful for the vocal support I have received for this amendment from the Home Builders Federation. I hope that the Minister may be able to support the intention of this amendment to the extent that she might even look to Parliamentary Counsel’s expertise to see whether my amendment serves the purpose or whether something supplementary might be moved on Report to achieve this—I hope—helpful objective. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 268 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to which I have added my name. I have to say at the outset that I have no idea whether the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, would agree with my comments, but I hope that he would.

Your Lordships have listened to, and taken part in, many debates over the years on the challenges faced by rural communities. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath have chaired committees looking in depth at these challenges. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, called for a national rural strategy, and I support this. Similarly, my noble friend Lord Foster pressed the case for there to be proper recognition of the challenges rural communities face and for the Government to have a discreet policy which recognises this. There is an industrial strategy, so why not a rural strategy?

The Government’s response was that all the issues faced by rural communities were covered under many other policy areas, so there was no need for a rural strategy. Assurances were given that all government policies would be rural-proofed. This, therefore, was a refusal to have a rural strategy—and there is very little evidence that all government policies are rural-proofed.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will certainly reflect on that question and see what we can do.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for his amendments, and I appreciate his concerns on a matter, which is close to his heart and to the heart of the noble Baroness opposite. While I support the intentions to lend further support to our rural economy, unfortunately I cannot accept this amendment, as it will not have the intended effect, and we believe it is unnecessary.

The permission in principle consent route is an alternative way of obtaining planning permission for certain housing-led development. When a proposed development is under consideration, it separates the matter of principle away from technical details. Our national planning policy framework strongly supports policies and decisions to promote sustainable development in rural areas. In particular, it states that to support a prosperous rural economy, local plans, neighbourhood plans and decisions should enable the development and diversification of agriculture and other land-based rural businesses.

Additionally, as set out in Section 58A of the Town and Country Planning Act, any economic development coming forward through permission in principle would have to be predominantly for housing development. Provision already exists to allow local planning authorities to grant permission in principle for economic development related to residential schemes within rural areas. Section 5A of the Town and Country Planning (Permission in Principle) Order 2017 also enables local planning authorities to grant permission in principle to any non-housing development if it is associated with residential development, and where the scale of the development and the use to which it may be put is specified.

I am aware that permission in principle is often used to test the principle of housing development within rural areas, rather than applicants going through the conventional planning application route, and these are assessed with our National Planning Policy in mind. It is a valuable tool in this respect, and I hope this provides reassurances to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, and accordingly that she will withdraw his amendment on his behalf.

I turn now to Amendment 282, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, on the speeding up of the planning system. There are around 400,000 planning applications every year. The Government have heard many representations that the planning application process is too slow and inaccessible for some users—notably those without the expertise, such as everyday people. It therefore requires improvement and modernisation. The powers being brought forward in Clause 116 enable the Government to apply a more consistent, streamlined and digitally enabled approach to the way in which the applications are made, making it easier for everyday people to submit a planning application. This will also make planning data more accessible. My department is already working with local authorities to tackle the very issue that this amendment raises, working collaboratively with the local authorities through the Open Digital Planning project, which aims to increase efficiencies in the development management process through creating modern development management software. Local authorities using the software that we are trialling have seen an estimated 35% time saving in the pre-validation process, when an application is first submitted, and post-validation, when the process is to reach a decision.

Before enacting these powers, we will fully engage with the local planning authorities and the sector as a whole; given that one of the core aims of this power is to streamline the process, we will of course consider the impact on speed of decision-making. While I support the intention of this amendment, the Government are unable to support its inclusion and hope that the noble Baroness will not press it.

Lastly, government Amendments 260A and 260B provide for consequential amendments to Clause 102 to make consistent the legislation with respect to an application being made directly to the Secretary of State, in relation to new Section 73B and Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, particularly for the opportunity to have further discussions with a view to coming back to this issue positively at Report. Drop-in permissions have played a significant part in enabling development to go ahead as people need it to do. The case law may now be clear, but it has become clear in the form in which it has developed only because there is no statutory basis for undertaking drop-in permissions in the way that they have been done for a number of years—and that is what we need to achieve. With her very kind response, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 258B.

Amendment 258B withdrawn.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

201: Schedule 7, page 281, line 26, at end insert “to the extent necessary to meet the obligations of the participating authorities to secure net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and in respect of nature recovery and biodiversity in the joint spatial development strategy area.”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the joint spatial development strategy contribution to mitigation of, or adaptation to, climate change to be consistent with the authority’s carbon reduction and other environmental targets.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, the first group today relates to the ways in which planning contributes to our objectives in respect of climate change. I remind the Committee of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I will speak to my Amendments 201 and 214, and refer to Amendments 226 and 309, which I believe make helpful suggestions to a similar effect.

The law relating to plan-making already requires that a local planning authority, when making a plan, must

“secure that the development and use of land in the local planning authority’s area contribute to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change”.

This is presently in Section 19(1A) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and is carried forward into the provisions of this Bill as regards both local plans, which one can see in new Section 15C inserted by Schedule 7, and joint spatial development strategies in new Section 15AA(8).

The purpose of my two amendments is to specify that, when we refer to “contribute to”, we mean that the local authorities should have policies designed fully to meet their statutory obligations in relation to the adaptation to climate change or its mitigation. Amendment 201 would do this by reference in the statute to the obligations of the participating authorities to meet net-zero targets and, given that spatial development in particular extends to the impacts of wider development in an area, to their obligations in respect of nature recovery and biodiversity. Amendment 214 more specifically references the guidance which the Secretary of State can issue to authorities in order for them to adapt to climate change.

Amendment 226 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, takes the approach of defining the terms “mitigation” and “adaptation” by reference to the Climate Change Act itself. Amendment 309 takes the approach of creating additional statutory duties for the Secretary of State in setting policy and seeks to extend the scope of the requirements for climate change mitigation and adaptation to individual planning decisions. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that I would not go that far. The risk of creating a stand-alone statutory criterion for planning decisions, distinct from its incorporation into the plan-led approach, is too great. The focus of my amendments is plan-making itself, which leads into the subsequent decision-making.

I want this debate to enable my noble friend the Minister to set out how the provisions in new Sections 15AA and 15C inserted by Schedule 7 give statutory force to the requirement for local authorities, when creating spatial strategies or local plans, to meet their carbon emissions targets and achieve net zero, and what guidance the Government can give in securing adaptation to climate change and what measures they can take if local authorities fail to plan accordingly. I would also be grateful to hear to what extent these provisions or other statutory requirements for nature recovery or to secure our biodiversity are applicable to plan-making.

These are key elements in future land use strategies. As we have heard in a previous debate, our buildings represent over a third of our greenhouse gas emissions. Adapting to climate change will demand radical thinking about spatial strategies. The Cambridge City Council environmental assessment prior to its local plan consultation clearly identified the advantages of urban densification and development on public transport corridors in reducing the carbon consequences of development. Developers are increasingly coming to terms with the need for nature recovery and biodiversity net gain to be integral to place-making in the future.

The statutory framework for the planning system needs to reflect the significance and centrality of these environmental principles to plan-making, and indeed place-making. I hope the Government will agree, and that we might use this debate to look at how these principles can be reflected in statute more effectively through this Bill. I beg to move Amendment 201.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett, and in mine. It is such a pleasure to hear the words “manmade climate change” coming from the government Benches. It is a real pleasure, because when I first came here in 2013, I was the only person talking about it, so thank you everybody who has mentioned it today.

I support quite a lot of the amendments in this group, but I am slightly concerned about the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and perhaps he would like to clarify. It looks as if his amendments would prevent a spatial plan or a local plan from targeting net-zero carbon emissions earlier than 2050. It is not enough to achieve it by 2050; we must make sure that it is done incrementally, not all at the last moment. That would create problems for, for example, the Green-led Stroud District Council, which is targeting achieving net zero by 2030. It would be madness to try to delay anything like that. I am not sure if that is the intention, but I would like to know. Sorry, does the noble Lord want to answer me now, before I have finished?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I just want to say that my purpose was to incorporate into the legislation what are existing statutory obligations on local authorities. That would not constrain them from planning for something more ambitious.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord; ambitious is good.

On Amendment 226, we need to define “mitigation” and “adaptation” in relation to the Climate Change Act 2008, because that Act’s target is again 2050, and we cannot risk any council plans that seek to achieve net zero sooner.

Moving on to hedgehogs, I think that everyone that I have mentioned this to today is so supportive of holes in fences and hedges for hedgehogs. I am really pleased about that because hedgehogs are an indicator species, which means that we can monitor what is going on with other ecosystems because of hedgehogs. If they become rare or even extinct, it will be harder to track damage to ecosystems and the environment. They indicate the health of the environment and of nature as a whole. The State of Britain’s Hedgehogs 2022 report found that numbers are down in rural areas by between 30% and 75% since 2000. Clearly, we have a problem here. Globally, hedgehogs are of least concern, but here in the UK the population is now classed as vulnerable. Therefore, I beg everybody to support this tiny but important amendment.

On Amendment 273, in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett, I am delighted that it is being supported by Labour, which has an amendment to that amendment. I personally have been talking about this since I was elected in 2000, and I do not know why it is still not understood. All buildings have a carbon content and when you destroy them, when you knock them down and throw the debris away, you are wasting carbon and you are then generating more carbon by replacing them, so, please, something along these lines must go into this Bill. I do not understand why the Government have not woken up to that yet.

On my Amendment 293, I really wish I had put something in, after the hedgehogs, about swift habitats. There are real concerns about the swift population in Britain. Obviously, preserving and enhancing habitat has a big impact on all birds, but particularly swifts. They arrive in the UK during the summer, lay their eggs and incubate them here. They like to live within houses and churches, and they need spaces to get into nesting sites. A lot of developers are now using swift bricks with little holes, which allow swifts spacious housing very safely within houses. Also, we can retrospectively put swift boxes up, which can do the same. Swifts play a crucial role in controlling insect pests, for example, so we need to support them. Numbers have plummeted, with a 53% decline since 2016, which is very disturbing. The Labour council in Ealing is doing its best to develop a site that has got a lot of swift habitats, so I would be grateful if any noble Lords who know anyone on Ealing Council could point out to them how destructive this is and that they should not be developing an area which swifts desperately need in London.

Of course, you need ecological surveys. Most noble Lords here care about nature, and if you do not know what nature is there, then you do not know whether you will disturb it or damage it in any way. A survey is basic to everything that is part of development of any kind. I thank your Lordships for listening.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Absolutely, we are very happy to meet on all these issues.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her full response to this debate, which admirably demonstrated the degree of consensus and agreement there is that this issue is both important and urgent, and that, as I think the noble Baroness put it, the planning system is not adapting. It is not securing the adaptation to climate change that we require or, arguably even more so, the mitigation of climate change. It is not even seeking in any substantial way to mitigate climate change. As the Government presently put it in the National Planning Policy Framework, the system is simply seeking to try to respond to the potential impacts of climate change. That is not sufficient; we require something more than that.

I say to my noble friend Lord Caithness that there are 14 paragraphs about flooding and coastal erosion in the draft National Planning Policy Framework. The only reference I can see that might bear upon his concern is the reference to the risk of overheating from rising temperatures. There is nothing about a planning response to the risk of fires and wildfires in the way that my noble friend expressed.

I say to my noble friend the Minister that the point is that, if we could look at the National Planning Policy Framework and see that it set out in very clear terms how the planning system s to secure the necessary level of mitigation and adaptation to climate change, I do not think we would have an argument. We have an argument because we cannot look at it. Chapter 14 of the draft NPPF is simply about making the necessary adaptations to deal with the impacts of climate change. It does not say that the planning system should be seeking to shift in any major, radical way so as to reduce the contributions which development in this country makes to continuing climate change risk.

Indeed, where biodiversity is concerned, there is more in chapter 15. I will look at it very carefully to see whether the NPPF tackles that. However, in this debate, the next debate and a subsequent debate on the design code, we are all going to be trying to use amendments to this Bill to achieve things which ought to be, by the Government’s own admission, in the National Planning Policy Framework. They want to have general legislation which allows them to specify what should then happen, but we need to see it in there.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, in her first speech asked when we are going to see the NPPF. My noble friend more or less said that it would be after we have finished with the Bill. That, I am afraid, will not wash. We have to see it before Report. If not, it is an inescapable conclusion that we will have to amend the Bill on Report in order to be sure that the subsequent instructions, as it were, to local authorities about what they need to do are clear from Parliament and the Government—otherwise it is simply left to the Government, and the Bill is silent. Where the environment is concerned, as things stand there are references to the Climate Change Act 2008, but the Government are proposing to leave them exactly as they are. The expectation is that, by doing the same thing as they did in the past, the results will be better. As Einstein might have said, that way lies madness. If we carry on doing the same things, we will get the same result. We have to think hard about how we do things differently.

I will return to this issue in the next group and in a subsequent one, but I think we have made our case to look at this again in the future. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 201.

Amendment 201 withdrawn.

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It is clear that this issue is becoming more and more urgent. Amendment 207 would help create the conditions necessary to achieve that elusive tipping point in making rightsizing for one’s older age the norm and providing for the thousands more who need and want a suitable home. I hope the Minister agrees, and I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I will speak to Amendments 215 and 218, tabled by me and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. That might be helpful because there is a substantial additional issue in this group which, I have to say, even after eight and a half days of debate on the Bill, may prove to be the most significant of all our debates thus far. It is about future housing supply.

The Government assert that the planning system is broken, and the fact that only 40% of local planning authorities have an up-to-date local plan might suggest that that is true. The public anger at the approval of planning permissions as a result of the lack of a five-year housing supply has created a deep lack of confidence in the system. The Government have a target of building 300,000 homes a year; we are 200,000 homes short of that target since it was set in 2018—possibly as much as 100,000 short in the past year. Even at that rate of new build, it would take decades to bring our housing supply up to anything comparable to other western European countries.

I do not think the issue is whether the planning system is broken; the issue is whether these reforms mend it. Unfortunately, the Government’s proposals for reform over recent years have not led to any acceleration in the building of new homes or the processes leading to it. On the contrary, the rate of plan-making has slowed to half the rate before the housing White Paper was published in 2020. Since the ministerial Statement in December last year concerning changes to the NPPF, 33 local plans have been delayed. Among the changes in the draft National Planning Policy Framework were that the standard method for the assessment of housing need should become an advisory starting point. It also included the watering down of the housing delivery test and, consequently, that the limitation on the use of the presumption in favour of sustainable development would also be watered down. It proposed the removal of the test of “justified” in the examination of plans, so local planning authorities can make the plans they wish to without having to justify them. Since those changes, fewer plans are being approved, fewer planning consents are being granted, and, consequently, fewer homes will be built. This is not mending a broken system.

I see nothing in the Bill and have heard nothing in our debates so far that leads us away from the idea that there should be a plan-led system. However, as my noble friend and I made clear in a debate on his earlier amendments, it requires the preparation, publication and approval of up-to-date local plans. If those local plans are approved timeously, we will have as a consequence a basis on which more homes can be built—particularly if those plans incorporate the necessary assessment of housing need.

Amendment 215 would place a statutory requirement on local planning authorities to plan for a housing supply which “meets or exceeds” that which would be specified by the standard method and the Government’s housing target. They can deploy an alternative method, but not in order to diminish the number of homes that the Government’s target would imply for their area. Amendment 218 would require local planning authorities to have regard to the Government’s housing target and to the standard method in assessing their housing requirements.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is true that I am not familiar with the 1907 Act in detail, if at all. It is also true that I did not introduce the subject of Oliver Dowden or the term “woke”; I was responding to the comment that was made. I would just like to carry on, as this bit of what I am saying is important to the Bill.

Sometimes people speak on behalf of local democracy and actually the problem is that what passes for local democracy at the level of consultations is often faux and sham consultations, and local people feel aggrieved. In Haringey, there has been a big row about whether the name even has racist connotations. Local people have put forward all sorts of ideas that it was to do with chimney sweeps or was based on King Charles II —all sorts of things. Local supermarket owner Ali Demirci has been going round asking people what they thought the original name was. Whereas the council seem convinced it is racist, local people do not necessarily.

The bit where levelling up comes in is as follows. Carol Lee, who has lived on the road for 35 years and has mixed-race children, was quoted in the Guardian as saying:

“I’ll have to change my driver’s licence, and that’s £40 alone. You have to look after your money these days”,


as well as saying that she objects and that this has been imposed, and so on. Graffiti has been put up on the changed sign and signs put up in windows with the original name on them.

I was simply making the point that, although I do not think this Bill is the right place to deal with it, I do not think there is nothing to be dealt with. As to the Colston statue question, it would be wrong if, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, suggested, we took to pulling down statues that we disagreed with because things did not go our way. I think that would be a destructive conclusion to reach.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds to the debate, I want to ask a couple of questions. I do not want to get into the detail of the public health Act, although I might say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, who quoted marking and painting, the text here is simply the same as the public health Act, so I do not think the draftsman can be criticised too much for incorporating some of the original drafting in the process of rewriting this bit of legislation.

I have two questions. First, subsection (10) of this clause says:

“No local Act operates to enable a local authority within subsection (1)(a) or (b) to alter the name of a street, or part of a street, in its area.”


That relates to a district council or to a county council for which there is no district council. Are there any such local Acts? I was not clear what the import of this is, and whether there are local Acts that have given this power and they are being disapplied by this provision. I wondered whether my noble friend knew whether there were any such local Acts.

Secondly, I did not give him notice of this question, but I am asking my noble friend if he will be kind enough to see what the department’s view is on it. If one knows Cambridge at all, one knows that to the west of Cambridge there is a new town called Cambourne. I was the Member of Parliament there when it was first proposed and, in the original naming process for what were then three linked villages, it was intended to use the name Monkfield, since they were actually built on land that was called Monkfield farm.

However, the local authority discovered that it had no power to determine what the name of a new village or town would be. Presumably, the legislation, except in the context of development corporations, never believed that local authorities would be naming new villages or towns that were put on to greenfield sites by private developers. As it turned out, the private developer had the right in law to determine the name Cambourne, which it chose using Cambridge and Bourn, a local village. Everyone is perfectly happy about that now, but at the time it was questioned whether it was appropriate that a local authority could name streets but could not name a town. That is a curious situation for us to have arrived at.

As it happened, the local authority subsequently came up with the excellent name of Northstowe, which I think slightly reflects the point made in the other amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, since it used the name of the hundred within which the town subsists—namely, Northstowe—which historically had never been applied to a specific village or town, so a historic name was able to be given a modern usage. Fortunately, that worked okay without anyone having any problems with it. The question is: should the local authority have such a power and, if not, is this worth thinking about at some point?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall focus straightaway on the provisions of Clause 77 in the round, in response to the concerns and questions that have been raised by the noble Lords, Lord Stunell and Lord Scriven, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Bennett.

Clause 77 creates a requirement for the necessary support to be obtained for any changes to street names. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked why the Government have included this clause in the Bill. I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I must repudiate the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, that this has something to do with the culture wars. The answer is that it addresses the issue that, in some places around the country, there has been considerable concern and disquiet where councils have taken it upon themselves to change the name of a street without any meaningful consultation with local residents.

Under the available legislation, which noble Lords have rightly said dates from the early 20th century, any council has the power to change the name of a given street without consulting the residents in the street. The provisions of the Bill will ensure that, instead, local residents will be properly involved in changes to street names that affect them—changes that, as we have discussed, can alter the character of their area. Street names are often an intrinsic part of an area’s heritage, cherished by the community for their history and representation of the place. Changing names involves both practical costs for residents and businesses and social cost to the community. We are clear that these costs should be borne only with the consent of those affected.

How that should be attained will vary according to the nature of the street and its importance in the community. A one-size-fits-all approach would be insufficient to properly allow the views of the community to be determinative. The clause will unify the approach to how changes to street names are made where currently the rights of the community depend upon where they live and, outside of London, the decision of the local authority as to how involved or not the community should be.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make just a small factual supplement to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. In fact, it was a Conservative Government in 1957 who introduced the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme or PPRS, and that scheme has been sustained ever since by Conservative, Labour and coalition Governments. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out, if it is deemed appropriate to have a form of price and profit regulation for the medicines industry, which delivers products that are essential and life-saving, it does not seem too far a stretch to think that an equivalent mechanism might be used for an industry whose products are discretionary and life-destroying.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I was not intending to intervene, but I was prompted to do so not least by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham. That the PPRS has been sustained by Governments, albeit amended from time to time, should not lead us to the conclusion that all products should have their pricing and regulation controlled by government. I do not think that the analogy runs at all, so we should ignore the PPRS for these purposes.

My noble friend on the Front Bench whom I believe is replying to this debate and I were in a coalition Government with the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and we were pretty clear then. I remember a decade ago creating a bit of a storm by saying that I wanted to end up with a smoke-free England. We have reached a point now where there are tobacco companies which think that we are going to arrive at that position, and so we should. I do not think that this debate is about whether we achieve that; it is about the mechanisms by which we do so.

If my noble friend reiterates the Government’s intention, willingness and sense of urgency about bringing forward measures, as I hope he does, I would not bind the hands of the Government with these amendments. Frankly, even if they were passed, nothing would happen unless and until the Government bring forward legislation for the purpose. It would be better for us to have the debate and make the position clear. I do not disagree with the arguments presented by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others—when we were in government, we implemented things such as the ban on display in shops and preventing the availability of cigarettes to youngsters through vending machines, which I think was one of the most important things we could do. We made progress; we need to make more. We need the Government to come forward with proposals for that, but these amendments are not necessary if the Government say that they are willing to make progress.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak, but I wanted to counter the point made to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, that he was simply rehearsing lines from FOREST, the pro-freedom to smoke group. I also inadvertently receive communiques from ASH, the anti-smoking lobby group—I think it has me muddled up with someone else—and I have heard many of its lines rehearsed here as well on the other side of the argument. I thought it might be worth noting that.

Secondly, I have to declare an interest: I smoke. I appreciate that this means that I am beyond any redemption—goodness knows, I am controversial enough on a range of other things, but that is probably the worst.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Grade. The point he made relates to my own experience in that, when the nutrient profiles in question were introduced in January 2011, I was Secretary of State. They were very much in the context of precisely the programme that I think he is looking for. It was about the reformulation of foods in the manner that had been done in relation to salt and to do the same for sugar and fats and the voluntary removal of transfats, which I think has essentially been accomplished. I have to say to my noble friend and the Committee that we have to be very careful because a lot of progress was made, but much more could have been made on a voluntary basis with the industry.

The nature of the attack made upon the Government and the industry was that, I paraphrase, “You’re working with the industry and, therefore, your activity is undermined by that fact.” It was rejected by many of the organisations that were seeking to achieve a public health objective. That was misplaced, and I am very disappointed that it happened like that. It would be a justifiable approach only if less healthy foods—HFSS foods or, for that matter, alcohol—were in the same position as tobacco. We do not deal with the tobacco industry because there is no safe level of tobacco consumption; we deal with the food and drink industry because there are safe levels of food and drink consumption.

My noble friends are nodding merrily, but I have to warn them that I actually agree with the Government’s proposals, partly because I think they are capable of being implemented in some respects in ways that meet some of the objectives that my noble friends are setting out. They can put practical timetables in place. They can give clear guidance about identifiable products, as distinct from brand sponsorship and the like. I do not like sunset clauses if we do not have to have them—if we have too many of them, as my noble friend Lord Moylan suggested, we would be clogged up with re-legislating all the time—but the Government can, by regulations, significantly change this.

I support the Government partly because they are clearly being attacked for doing too little and attacked for doing too much, so they are probably doing about the right thing. I think they are doing the right thing because we all know—the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said it—that obesity, and perhaps especially childhood obesity, is a multifactorial problem, so we must have multifactorial solutions. The one thing I would not accept is the proposition that I have sometimes heard from Governments of all persuasions: something must be done; this is something; therefore, it must be done. We need to implement many responses to this major public health issue—the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, is quite right—and we must tackle it as if it really matters. It is one of those missions that a mission-led Government should be seeking to achieve. It will need a wide range of different responses, of which this is one. All of them should be examined carefully to see whether they are evidence-based and effective.

I have to say that it is very difficult to say what is effective in this context because, for example, although we know that children who consume relatively more less healthy foods have a less healthy diet and are more likely to be obese, if we look at all the correlations, there are quite a lot of children who have a poor diet but it is not necessarily particularly heavy in less healthy foods. There are a lot of children whose poor diet is directly the consequence of their poverty, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. The idea that we will see direct cause and effect is difficult to accomplish, but that does not mean we should not try. So, for public health reasons, I support what the Government are setting out to do.

I shall make one final point. The lead amendment in this group was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and we have a later group on alcohol labelling. I have to say to her that I think that, in this context, her amendment is misplaced, first, because I think it derives from the idea that alcohol is like tobacco. For only a small minority of people is it necessary not to drink at all; most people who have a low or moderate alcohol consumption are at low risk. Secondly, she dismissed with a wave of the hand the codes and what has been achieved. I do not think that is fair. I think the alcohol marketing code has made a difference in relation to alcohol. I wish there was an HFSS marketing code that had been similarly effective because, where alcohol is concerned, the Health Survey for England 2019 said that, in 2003, 45% of eight to 15 year-olds had consumed an alcoholic drink and that, by 2019, that had dropped to 15%. These things can move in the right direction. We just need to make them do so. It does not automatically follow—

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Will the noble Lord clarify some of his statement about young people? We know that there are specific cultural groups among young people who do not drink at all, which has brought the average down, just as we know that there is a spectrum in poverty and obesity. Does the noble Lord feel that the current guidelines or whatever are working, given that there were 7,000 deaths from alcohol liver disease in 2020 and that there has been a 400% increase in the number of deaths from alcohol liver disease since 1972? If this had been working really well, we would not be seeing these increases. At the moment, we have a catastrophically large number of people dying from alcohol liver disease, which has got much worse during lockdown.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

The noble Baroness is drawing me into what is a very important debate, but I do not think it is this one in this group. We will come on to it perhaps on Amendment 259 at a later stage. I do not disagree that we have not succeeded where alcohol consumption is concerned, but the nature of the problem has manifested itself more recently, especially in smaller numbers of people consuming alcohol, some not at all, but those who do very often doing so through binge drinking, which is exactly what is giving rise to what we are all most concerned about, which is the significant harm that is resulting for those people. We need to think behaviourally about the nature of the problem in order to find behaviourally what is the nature of the solution.

I need to stop, but I shall raise just one point with my noble friend on the Front Bench. I started with nutrient profiling. Nutrient profiling is terribly important. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made the point that we do not get to look at that, but what it says is terribly important. As I understand it, we are due for a revision, but we have not yet seen it. There was a 2013 study that looked at our nutrient profiling and compared it to that of the WHO and five European countries. It concluded that, in relation to a large number of processed and packaged foods, under our system 47% would be able to be advertised to children, while under the WHO system it was 32%. There is a significant difference in what one puts into the nutrient profiling. It is not an objective truth, and putting alcohol in it completely misses the point, since it is not constructed around that proposition. I ask my noble friend to tell us a bit more about the nutrient profiling process, the timetable, the evidence and how we are going to put it together to meet the objectives under the Bill.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I will be very brief. I declare my chairmanship of the Communications and Digital Committee. A lot of powerful speeches have been made all around the House today and clearly, we are all united in our care and concern for the issue of child obesity. The complexity of what is proposed in this legislation has been illustrated to such an extent that there is a case for delaying implementing these measures so that it is got right.

But the main reason for my decision to speak in this debate is the issue of fairness, equal treatment and the difference in the way these regulations apply to broadcasters and to the online platforms. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood have already spoken in some detail about the inequality of treatment between broadcasters and news publishers, and the online platforms.

I spell out clearly that what we are talking about here is that responsibility for the control and compliance of advertising that appears on television or radio rests with broadcasters, which can be sanctioned severely with huge fines by regulators if they allow anything that is non-compliant to air. But responsibility does not rest with the online platforms, which take far more in profit from the advertising they publish on their sites than any broadcaster is able to. They are equally able to control what appears on their platforms, as the noble Viscount powerfully described. Could my noble friend the Minister therefore explain why the Government are not ensuring parity between broadcasters and the likes of Google and Facebook at the point of legislation, to ensure parity in the way this will be applied?

Also under the heading of fairness, I say that, in the case of the small manufacturers of the products affected by the advertising ban, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which ensures that the definition of “SME” in the Bill does not provide a loophole exempting large international manufacturers from these advertising restrictions just because they have a small workforce in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I believe that I said that the criteria for measuring the success of this policy have been set out in the impact assessment. I will happily send that to my noble friend. I do not think that it is a finalised list. We have discussed in this Committee the difficulty of assessing success, so we would not want to preclude new research or information that would help us to assess our approach better in future.

My noble friend was right in anticipating that I was about to conclude. This has been a substantial group of amendments—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, can I ask her about the nutrient profiling technical guidance? What is the timetable and process for its review?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend was of course eagle-eared—I am mixing a metaphor—in that I did not address his point on that. I can tell him that, in 2016, the Government commissioned Public Health England to review the UK NPM algorithm that has been in place since 2004, to ensure that it aligns with dietary recommendations from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, particularly for free sugars and fibre. I am afraid to say that my next line is that the outcome of that review will be published in due course.

Sue Gray Report

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I say, the Prime Minister has apologised and said it is entirely right for the police to investigate these matters. We now need to wait for the results of that investigation.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Sue Gray’s report did not extend to the question of what was said to the House of Commons by the Prime Minister in relation to these events over a number of months. Could my noble friend say when and by what means the Prime Minister is proposing to correct the record for the House, when it was inadvertently or otherwise misled?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

At all times, the Prime Minister has set out his understanding of events. He has taken full responsibility and apologised. He wants to make changes to address these issues and will work tirelessly to regain people’s trust.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

162A: Clause 26, page 37, leave out lines 23 to 30
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, along with another to this Clause, would remove the power of the Secretary of State to set, and from time to time revise, objectives and priorities for the CQC, but would require the CQC to consult the Secretary of State when it revises indicators of quality for the purposes of assessments under subsection (4).

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, the purpose of Clause 26 is to introduce a process by which the Care Quality Commission inspects integrated care systems. The structure of this is the subject of my Amendments 162A and 164A. Those two amendments go together—they are not separate, but entirely linked. The purpose of Amendment 162A is to remove the process by which the Secretary of State sets objectives and priorities for the Care Quality Commission in undertaking such inspections of integrated care systems; Amendment 164A then seeks to insert a process by which the Secretary of State, and indeed others, are consulted by the Care Quality Commission over the quality indicators that it would use to assess the quality and performance of integrated care systems.

A bit of background would be helpful for noble Lords in this respect. Think back to what the Care Quality Commission’s existing statutory arrangements are in relation to reviews and performance assessments of existing bodies in the National Health Service. The structure is very straightforward. The commission is asked to set quality indicators, to consult on those and then to review against them and produce reports. I know from personal experience that the Secretary of State cannot direct the Care Quality Commission to undertake a particular review, but they can certainly make a request, and their role as steward of the whole healthcare system has certainly led Secretaries of State to do that from time to time. But the legislation does not permit the Secretary of State to direct the Care Quality Commission in how it does its job; it is an independent body corporate. There is intrinsic merit in the Care Quality Commission, as an inspectorate, operating independently. The structure of this clause in this Bill is at odds with the way in which the existing legislation is structured in the 2008 NHS Act as amended. The effect of these two amendments would be to restore the independence of the Care Quality Commission in undertaking its activities and in the way in which it goes about its job.

The Government’s drafting of the legislation is wrong anyway. There are references to objectives and priorities. The priorities are referred to in new subsection (3), inserted by Clause 26(2), which says that they

“must include priorities relating to leadership, the integration of services and the quality and safety of services.”

I have to say that this is teaching grandmothers to suck eggs. There is no way in which the Care Quality Commission is not going to incorporate such indicators of quality. We know that from the generic nature of the quality indicators that it uses generally for existing NHS bodies. The reference to setting objectives is not only novel but completely undefined. The Secretary of State can set whatever objectives they wish to; we do not know what they are and there is no indication of what they might be. Taking out references to objectives and priorities seems to me to be a very good thing.

As it happens—I declare my own role in this—in the 2012 legislation there was previously a process by which the Secretary of State set standards for the Care Quality Commission in determining what the quality indicators should look like. We actually took that out of the 2012 legislation, precisely on these grounds: that the Care Quality Commission is, and should be, as independent as possible.

I think this clause proceeds from the mistaken apprehension that the Care Quality Commission is a part of the management process of the NHS. It is not. If the Secretary of State wishes integrated care systems to proceed in any particular way, the Secretary of State has the means to do so available via the mandate; the Government plan to add specific powers of direction; and NHS England has duties that go in exactly the same direction. The Care Quality Commission is not part of the management process for integrated care systems; it is an inspectorate. If—and this is a risk we must avoid—the Secretary of State were directly intervening to set objectives for integrated care systems to be inspected subsequently by the Care Quality Commission, whereas NHS England is itself setting objectives for integrated care systems through its responsibilities and duties, those two may come into conflict.

For all those reasons, the Government would be well advised to accept these two amendments and put the Care Quality Commission into the independent role in relation to ICSs that it, and people working in the National Health Service, would recognise as being its role. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has set out the tensions underlying the Bill about returning to the Secretary of State powers over independent, arms-length bodies; specifically, in this amendment, the inspections carried out by the Care Quality Commission in its role as a regulatory body. He rightly reminded us of the current arrangements, which give the CQC the ability to set its indicators and which, frankly, work well. I will not repeat his arguments, except to say in a slightly wider context that almost every piece of legislation brought to Parliament by this Government has given Ministers more powers—including, as in Clause 26, the power to intervene and to change remits.

The noble Lord’s amendments maintain the independence that the CQC—and other regulatory bodies—need to be able to inspect and make rulings without fear of favour or influence from politicians, while ensuring that the CQC must consult the Secretary of State when it revises indicators of quality for the purposes of assessment. That seems to me to provide the requirement for the CQC and the Secretary of State to engage in dialogue, but without the political intervention outlined in Clause 26(2) and (5).

Can the Minister explain why the Government feel the need to remove the independence of the CQC—whether this is an issue of management, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said—and how giving the Secretary of State these powers can maintain the independence of a regulatory body?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that explanation, which, I am sorry to tell him, wholly fails to provide reassurance. First, he was wrong, in the sense that he maybe implied that my amendments would have removed the Secretary of State’s requirement to approve the indicators on which the commission chooses to base its reviews. That is left in at new Clause 46B(4)(b), so the approval of the Secretary of State for the indicators would remain. What is being taken out by my amendments is the requirement for the Secretary of State to set objectives and priorities. I am afraid that everything that my noble friend said went to support my view that there is an erroneous perception on the part of the Government that the CQC must be turned into an integral part of the management of the NHS and the integrated care system. That is simply not the case.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her support. I quibble with her slightly in a pedantic way. We should not talk about the CQC as just another regulator; it is the inspectorate. In my experience, inspection should never be regarded as a substitute for management. Quality is integral to the management of the service. The CQC is there to determine and review whether that quality is being achieved, which is why I am perfectly happy for the Secretary of State, and indeed others, to be consulted and for the Secretary of State to approve the indicators of quality that the CQC arrives at. Frankly, however, for the Secretary of State to go further and start to prescribe the way the objectives of the CQC are set in this way is directly at odds with how the CQC reviews and reports on other NHS bodies. I can see the drift of this. If we accept it, we will end up with the CQC being told by the Secretary of State what its indicators of quality are for every NHS body and setting objectives and priorities for the CQC right across the board, which is completely at odds with the independence of the CQC.

I shall make one final point. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Altmann. Exactly the same argument applies to Clause 137, although I have not tabled amendments to it. It creates the CQC’s additional scrutiny and performance assessment of social care functions. We should therefore come back to precisely the point that she is talking about, as she suggests.

I hope my noble friend the Minister will take my point and that we might have further conversations between now and Report. However, I have to tell him that it is not just me who raises these points; I have been asked by representative bodies within the NHS to do so. We should take them seriously and hope that between now and Report we might see whether there are better ways to structure Clause 26 to secure both the Government’s objectives and what the NHS would expect to happen. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 162A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

As we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Patel, this is a very easy issue to address. There is no objection, and it would send a very powerful signal, with regard not only to the importance of professional participation in the appointment of future consultants but to the recognition that, although health is a devolved matter, we recognise the United Kingdom as a single entity in so many questions for the provision of health and, in particular, the training and development of healthcare professionals and their ability to work across our entire country.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, can I just take us back to Amendment 266, to which I have added my name, before we lose sight of it? It was helpfully introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, and its purposes were explained very well by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

I just want to add a bit of context, which I hope will commend itself in particular to my noble friend Lord Howe on the Front Bench, in that he and I tackled together the PIP breast implant problems that emerged in December 2010 and which led directly, subsequently, to us asking the distinguished first medical director of NHS England, Bruce Keogh, to undertake an inquiry. Since the report of that inquiry, we have made considerable progress. Most recently, noble Lords will recall that the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, took through the Private Member’s Bill from Laura Trott in the other place to assist in the regulation of Botox treatment for under-18s.

The point is that there is still unfinished business. Amendment 266 relates to giving the Secretary of State the power to set up a licensing process for non-surgical cosmetic procedures—not through the CQC in this case, because the CQC regulates healthcare professionals, but almost certainly through the mechanism of asking local authorities to undertake a licensing process. It gives the Secretary of State all the flexibility that we have grown accustomed to legislation having to give them, but it does so in a way that enables the regulation that would be brought in using this power to be proportionate, being very clear that it should apply only to those activities that present a significant risk. It makes sure that it takes advantage, for example, of the national standards that have been put in place by the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners. It would be very helpful in trying to mitigate the risks associated with non-surgical cosmetic procedures.

Amendment 293 in my name is a follow-up to a Private Member’s Bill that made no progress. It again follows Bruce Keogh’s report and looks to give the General Medical Council the legislative opportunity and requirement to bring forward a scheme to put surgeons who have a specialty relating to cosmetic surgery on to its specialist registers. With Amendment 293, we have the benefit of being able to do this by virtue of the recommendations in recent years from the Cosmetic Surgery Interspecialty Committee of the Royal College of Surgeons. It gives us an opportunity to give those who wish to undertake surgical treatments for cosmetic purposes the opportunity to see who is on the specialist register. All this relates to the safety of those undertaking cosmetic treatments, which is a large number of people; there is a large amount of activity and a significant need for the consumers of these services to have a degree of protection. I think we can make progress on that.

In the rest of this group, we have another opportunity to take action. My noble friend was right when she spoke about a more general approach. She will recall that, in April 2014, the Law Commission produced its recommendations on the regulation of healthcare professionals, so there is an opportunity to do something here. If we do not do it in this Bill, it would not hurt for the Government to tell us more about how they might make progress on the broader regulation, in addition to what is being proposed here.

I want to mention two other things. First, we had an earlier debate about access to innovative medicines. This is another opportunity for my noble friend to tell the Committee that NHS England is proceeding with its consultation on the implementation of the innovative medicines fund. Secondly, we do not need to repeat the short debate we had in Grand Committee not so very long ago under the auspices of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who enabled us to present a lot of arguments about the future of NHS Resolution and clinical negligence within the NHS. We do not need to repeat that, but Amendments 178 and 297E would of course help us in that direction, not least by repealing the redundant NHS Redress Act 2006, which has never been implemented. With that thought, I pass the ball to the noble Lord, Lord Storey.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 266 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and Amendment 293 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley for all the reasons that my noble friend just articulated. I will not repeat them as he put them so very well. However, I would say to the Minister that, coming from the innovation space, I can see that the technologies for both cosmetic surgery and non-surgical cosmetic interventions are improving all the time. There is an incredibly rapid pace of change. They are set to continue to get better and better, so the marketplace is getting more sophisticated and their popularity is also exploding. We have been briefed on evidence about the role of social media in promoting non-surgical cosmetic interventions in particular. This is exciting, because it is great that people have access to these interesting products, but also extremely worrying, because not all the surgeries and non-surgical interventions are successful. It is the right time for the Government to intervene, so that we have a register of cosmetic surgical practitioners and a much clearer regulatory regime for non-surgical interventions.

I am pro cosmetic surgery. As a young boy, I had an inherited condition of having very big, sticking-out ears, which my father had and my cousins and aunts have, and it was miserable. I had them pinned back and I am very grateful that that happened. It meant that I could be a much more confident person as I grew up. I am pro cosmetic interventions; if people want to use the benefits of medicine to improve their confidence in the way they look, I applaud that. However, standing next to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, I am also aware of Bruce Keogh’s extremely good report and the very large number of interventions that have not gone well. I know that the Minister’s instincts are not to intervene unless absolutely required and my suggestion to him is that we have hit that moment. The marketplace is exploding and now is the right time to intervene.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may make two quick points. At an earlier stage in the Committee, using the example from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, in relation to Bromley by Bow and north-east London, I asked why the legislation cannot allow clinical commissioning groups, as they have established themselves over years, to continue as place-based committees or subsidiary elements of an integrated care system. I am sure that many of them would be willing to do so; we should allow them to do exactly that, because there is otherwise a gap in relation to how large ICBs will do their place-based work.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, referred to what I said about provider collaboratives. I still think it. Where are we going to end up with this? It will be with NHS England having within it, as each integrated care board has within it, the provider interest and the commissioner interest. The Government purport to be abolishing the purchaser/provider split. Every Secretary of State prior to the former Secretary of State, Matt Hancock, seemed to believe in it, with the exception of Frank Dobson. There was a reason why we did that: because it is a fact. We might legislatively abolish the purchaser/provider split, but, in reality, it will exist. As my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral said earlier, if that conflict of interest is not properly recognised and managed, it will emerge with potentially damaging consequences. Transparency about how provider interests are to be properly managed inside the NHS is not something I yet see in the substance of the Bill. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will agree to think hard about this and perhaps talk about how we might give transparency and accountability to that conflict of interest.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 165 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. This is a small but important group of amendments.

I have added my name to the amendment because I am interested in what is happening to primary care and particularly the voice of GPs in the new arrangements. Frankly, we are not hearing much about them. As it stands, the legislation will place NHS trusts and foundation trusts in quite a privileged position in deciding how plans are made and resources allocated. I am not quite sure where the voice of GPs comes into the new arrangements. I understand that NHS England has commissioned a review of the role of primary care in the NHS structures, but my understanding is also that it will not report until after the Bill has been passed if we continue with the current timetable. Frankly, by then, it will be a bit late to make sure that we have got the arrangements absolutely right.

It is right that primary care commissioning is undertaken at a local level by people with relevant knowledge and skills, and with the necessary experience of what primary care needs to look like at locality level. That is why it is right that the new place-based partnerships are to be given that commissioning role. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I think it is important that these primary care commissioning arrangements are established in statute, because it is only if that happens that Parliament will be clear about the accountability arrangements and the governance and leadership. It is also important that there is real transparency in the system. At the moment, it all feels a bit opaque. I hope that the Minister can give some assurances on this point.

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Again, I say that you cannot consider this group of amendments without taking account of the noble Baroness’s group of amendments, which are equally important, and the other accretions of power that the Minister is taking. I hope the Minister will give a proper justification—I have not yet heard one—for why the Secretary of State feels the need to take these powers. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall intervene relatively briefly. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, quite rightly said that this is a significant departure from the intentions of the 2012 legislation. The 2021 Act, among other things, created the body that is now NHS England and gave it independence. None of that independence was intended to mean, nor has proven to, that it was not responsive to even the day-to-day wishes of a Secretary of State, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, would verify. What it did put in statute was that, if the Secretary of State wants to set something as an objective of NHS England, they put it in the mandate. If the Secretary of State requires a change to those objectives, they publish a revision to the mandate.

Going beyond it is, I think, the product of circumstances where we had a Secretary of State who was encountering an emergency and thought he could press lots of buttons and things would happen, but pressed some and they did not. I think, even in his experience, that was more outside NHS England than inside it— I may be wrong, but that was certainly my impression. The point is that the Secretary of State did not even realise what powers he had in an emergency; they are all there and he was not required to change the mandate, because it was an emergency. In a public health emergency, none of this, strictly speaking, is within the same bounds.

Ministers have quite rightly said that this is the Bill the NHS asked for. But Clause 39 is not the clause that the NHS asked for; it is the opposite of what it is asking for. There are many practical issues. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is right; if it appears, including to the senior people and bright youngsters, that power is going to shift from NHS England back to the Department of Health and Social Care, they will go and work in the department. One of the things I was most pleased about was that some of the brightest and best, including civil servants in the department who I knew well, went to work in NHS England, because they thought, “This is a great future.” That is terrific, because one of the problems was that NHS managers were being imported into the Department of Health, rather than bright policymakers going to the NHS. The NHS is too important an institution for it not to have the best possible policymakers under its own purview.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Walmsley, have done a sterling job in trying to mitigate a general power of direction for the Secretary of State. Frankly, I have not heard a case for it, it is contrary to where we are and where we need to go, and the simplest thing is to simply take Clause 39 out of the Bill.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Hunt, on this set of amendments, with which I totally agree. I want to dilate for a few moments on the realpolitik of being a Minister in the great, august organisation called the Department of Health and Social Care. I can say some things that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, as a former elected Minister, possibly cannot.

When I ceased to be a Parliamentary Secretary and was promoted to work with the big boys and girls as a Minister of State, and had to deal with issues such as reconfiguration, poor performance and so forth, I became used to regularly meeting elected MPs who wanted to tell me about the errors of their ways in decisions that had been taken in the public interest. There was a steady flow of them, which, if I may say, tended to get bigger the nearer you got to an election. If people wanted to go through the archives, I would refer them to the history of Lewisham Hospital and of Chase Farm Hospital, to name but two.

Very often in these situations, it is not about closing a whole hospital but about re-engineering—we will come to some of this in the next group. I give the example of stroke services in London. It is re-engineering a particular set of services, which the local MP is then put up for trying to ensure that change does not happen. That is where you need to help Ministers do the right thing, when it is in the public interest to make changes. The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, help Ministers do the right thing.

The point the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made is absolutely valid. In many of these circumstances, it becomes very difficult if you are an elected Minister—as distinct from an appointed Minister, who does not have to face the electorate—to resist some of the local pressures to avoid change which would be disadvantageous to a local hospital. For those realpolitik reasons, I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is on the right track and we should support the amendments.

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Let me give my noble friend one simple example of how this could shift decision-making from NHS bodies to the Secretary of State. We discussed previously, in an earlier group, the availability of in vitro fertilisation services. There will be pressure on the Secretary of State to issue a direction that the NICE recommended availability of in vitro fertilisation services should be provided. By what means is the Secretary of State going to say, “No, I can’t issue such a direction”? It is entirely within his power to do so. The pressures will all be on the Secretary of State to issue directions to do things that the NHS locally may choose or choose not to do. The power will shift. Is he aware of what he is wishing for?

[Lord Warner (CB)]

Before the Minister answers that question, could I add another? We have had 10 years’ experience of NHS England under three chief executives and a number of different chairmen. Can the Minister give any examples of where the powers the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, gave the Secretary of State have been inadequate for them to give direction to NHS England?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Secretary of State cannot issue a direction to CCGs or ICBs on any of this using this power. We have been clear that direction cannot be given in relation to drugs, medicines or on treatments that NICE has recommended or issued guidance on. I gave the example of where we want this guidance—with the draft guidelines published for ICBs. The Secretary of State would be able to intervene and ask to see that guidance—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again but let us be clear: the Secretary of State would be asked to give a direction in line with NHS guidance. There is nothing in the exception in Clause 39 which says that the Secretary of State cannot give such a direction.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

If my noble friend will allow me, I will have to consider that and write, and make that available to all noble Lords.

We have included a number of exceptions to the power of direction in the Bill to ensure that the Secretary of State is not able to intervene in day-to-day operational matters. For example, there is no intention to use the power to direct NHS England on procurement matters.

On Clause 64, the rationale for removing these duties is twofold. First, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of different parts of the health and care system working together. The clause removes some barriers in legislation that hinder collaboration between system partners. It facilitates collaboration between NHS England and system partners and enables broader thinking about the interests of the wider health system. Secondly, removing the Secretary of State’s duty to promote autonomy will put increased accountability at the heart of the Bill.

Overall, these clauses encompass flexibility, allowing Ministers to act quickly and set direction, while balanced with safeguards and transparency requirements to ensure that they can be held to account. I understand that there are a number of concerns about this group of amendments and others. I am sure we will have a number of discussions, but in the meantime, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.