Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Jenkin of Roding

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

An illustration of what my noble friend is talking about is that it is a developer who builds a new house in the forest, and an environmentalist who goes and lives in it.

[Lord Lucas]

That is a nice illustration. There are bits of wording; as my noble friend Lord Deben said, if we are going to put something in legislation, then we must produce something that works in the courts. An authority must know that it is complying with the law and other people must be able to judge whether it has complied with the law. There are bits in here which are frankly impossible from that point of view. The words “of all” appear several times, and completely remove the definition from reality when it comes to deciding the matter in a court. There are things about future generations, where we cannot know or even begin to imagine. We hardly know what is happening to the economy next week, let alone what will be the effects of a future development on future generations. We can do our best to assess that, but we cannot be held accountable for whether it does or does not; one just produces an immediate morass in the courts if one goes down that route.

There is a lack, as several noble Lords have said, of development, or the understanding of development. If you are going to assess a sustainable development you have to look at it as a whole, as a picture of everything that is happening, and not its individual bits; as a picture of what will happen over time, and not at any particular instant. There is no recognition of that at all in this definition. You could trip up a development just because it is doing a bit of harm to something, even though looked at as a whole it was doing good.

Indeed, many developments harm things but do good in other ways, and some developments compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Every time you take a bit of coal, gravel or gas out of the ground, that is not available to future generations. It is inevitable that we are living with compromise and fuzziness in this area. It is up to us to do our best by some well designed guiding lights, but we should not try to pin down a legal definition to something which is not suitable for it.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Jenkin of Roding

Monday 20th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I look forward to addressing the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, has just raised when we come to the neighbourhood section of the Bill. It is important that for such people, and indeed for Gypsies and others who have traditionally been made unwelcome, we have a system whereby localism does not become exclusion.

I welcome the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. My noble friend Lady Hanham may remember that in 2006 my brother, Tim Palmer, published a pamphlet with Policy Exchange called No More Tears. If she has read that, she will realise that I am a considerable radical when it comes to localism—I share his views—and I regard the Bill as a small step on the way. In her reply to the amendment, I hope that at this stage of the Bill we shall have a good exposition of where the Government stand on localism at the moment, which will give us a good context for the rest of these debates.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, there was much in my noble friend’s speech in moving the amendment with which one could not but agree. I particularly liked his point that there may be too many provisions in the Bill where it appears that the Government are trying to tell local authorities how to exercise their newly granted general power of competence. I look forward to identifying particular points in the Bill and saying, “Look, this is not necessary”.

Where I have had difficulty with my noble friend’s new clause is that it is not going to achieve anything in the direction that some of us would like to see. You have to look at the individual provisions of the Bill if you actually want to reduce the degree of central control or direction of a locally exercisable power. If my noble friend is seeking to oblige the House to look at the Bill with that in mind then his speech will have made a useful contribution, but I am not sure that the provision that he seeks to put in would add anything. The way that one deals with legislation is that one looks at the provisions in the Bill itself and that is what we will spend a large part of the next four weeks doing.

On the interpretation of the Bill, I remind the House that the courts decided long ago, in the case of Pepper v Hart, that if the provisions of a Bill are unclear, the courts are entitled to see what Ministers said in introducing and debating it. I had to downsize my own household when we moved back to London, and I offered around my bound Hansards, which covered well over 40 years, to see whether anyone wanted them. They are all now in the Supreme Court on the other side of Parliament Square. I have not been to look at them but I am told that that is where they are. They did not cost me or the court anything. That is in order that the Supreme Court judges can have in front of them the Hansard reports of what was said by Ministers to be the purpose of the Bill.

Looking at what Ministers can say about this Bill and what is actually in it, one wonders what the purpose of the proposed new clause is. My noble friend made an interesting exposition of a number of points, but it would not be appropriate to add a new clause of this sort when we have eight days of debate in which we will be dealing with the details. I have to say that if my noble friend sought to press his new clause to a Division, I would have some difficulty in supporting him. I hope that he will forgive me.