Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Lord Stunell

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the board of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.

Designation as an NSIP, a nationally significant infrastructure project, has a blighting effect. It differs from a normal planning permission in that the Government become something akin to a co-partner in a project that is designated an NSIP, supporting it because of its national significance. But what responsibilities fall on the Government as a result of this co-partnership, sponsorship or promotion of a particular project? In particular, what obligations fall on them to avoid or mitigate any persistent blight that might ensue?

An egregious example is the expansion of Heathrow Airport. Noble Lords may not know that I have been a long-standing opponent of the expansion of Heathrow Airport for over 10 years. More importantly, not only do I oppose it but I think it is unworkable and undeliverable: it involves either moving the M25 or building a runway over it, its cost would exceed £18 billion when the whole market value of the airport is significantly less than that, and so on. But there it is: the designated status remains present for Heathrow Airport’s expansion, and the blighting of the area—the effect that it has on the surrounding villages, on housing and on other land uses—remains.

An example from Ebbsfleet relates to the Swanscombe peninsula, a large triangle of land that, so to speak, protrudes into the Thames. It is within the red line of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation as a planning authority, but the corporation does not own it. Proposals for a privately funded resort, of the character of a Disneyland or whatever, were given nationally significant infrastructure project status as long ago as 2014. Very slowly, the company promoting it advanced to a position in 2021 of being able to submit a DCO. In the meantime, it suffered the bolt from the blue of Natural England turning up out of nowhere—or, specifically, out of Ebbsfleet International railway station—and designating it a site of special scientific interest. This ability of Natural England to appear out of nowhere and designate sites as SSSIs at the same time as they are nationally significant infrastructure projects is worth exploring in a different debate. Then the DCO was rejected by the planning inspectors for, among other things, not having a transport plan attached to it—a point that had been made repeatedly to the company by the corporation in its role as planning authority. Now I read in the newspapers that the company recently went into administration.

However, the blight on the land and—while there are not many of them—on the existing industrial occupants of the land continues. I do not mean by this any criticism of the developer and I do not regard its failure to deliver the project, at least to date, as a criticism of it. Private sector projects inherently involve the taking of risk. It is right that we have an economy where risk is taken, but one of the corollaries of taking risk is that not all businesses or projects succeed, so the fact it has have not succeeded is not a criticism of it.

However, that is not my point; my point is to ask where the Minister is in all this. Where is the department that agreed to the designation, all of nine years ago? It is true that the Minister has written recently to the company, asking how it plans to progress. But since the company is in administration, I am not sure what answer he expects to get. Apart from that, it is hard to see how the Government have engaged with furthering this project, which they regard as nationally significant.

My amendment is intended to be very gentle. It places very little obligation on the Government but it would require them, three years after designating an NSIP, to review progress—that is all—“and annually thereafter”, with a view to seeing whether the project is actually going to be delivered. It then says that the Secretary of State may decide to cancel the designation. That power to cancel is already in existing legislation—the Planning Act 2008, as amended—so I am not conferring a new power. I am simply implying that he or she should consider it as a result of a review of progress. This would at least show that the Government share a responsibility for the progress of projects which they have designated as nationally significant. It would help to mitigate the blight that they cause, in effect, by showing that degree of engagement, review and possible cancellation.

I regard this as a very modest amendment, and one that it would be easy for my noble friend on the Front Bench simply to accept as drafted. I look forward to her response and hope that that is indeed what she agrees to do.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I give three-quarters support—I was going to say half-hearted support—to what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has moved by way of his amendment. The nationally significant infrastructure projects programme was quite a radical change when it was introduced. It was seen as a way of what one might call railroading—except that would perhaps be unfortunate given some of the projects—or delivering national projects which would be perpetually trapped in the local planning system should they go by the conventional route.

It is something of a planning bulldozer, and I absolutely share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about the expansion of Heathrow; we are on the same page as far as that goes. It is equally clear that, if a project such as Heathrow was ever to go forward, it would not survive the local planning processes, so the existence of a nationally significant infrastructure project mechanism for delivery is certainly well justified in the legislation. The question is: what happens when a project begins to fade from the priority list of the Government or, for that matter, that of investors in a private project? The noble Lord has produced two examples, known very well to him from his personal work experience and career, which illustrate the point.

I say to the Minister that surely there should be some process of project review in central government. The Built Environment Select Committee—I was a member until January—considered that in some detail, in looking at some evidence that we received in relation to reports. The committee took evidence from various parties. Who is actually in charge of the oversight of whether projects will proceed, are proceeding or are making progress? The committee was not convinced at that time that the Government had a viable and clear process for deciding that a project was or was not a priority, what that priority might be or what its consequences might be. The idea that there is a national pipeline, with projects neatly lined up going in at one end and coming out completed at the other, is fanciful. However, that is the way that the thinking, and often the public expression, about having a national infrastructure plan is expressed.

I am with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and this amendment, but I see it much more as being about hearing from the Government that they have a review process, that the review process is capable of taking a hard decisions, and that, when it takes a hard decision, it makes it operational on the ground so that we do not have huge areas, such as those around Heathrow, that are blighted. Indeed, on the peninsula on the Thames estuary, to which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan referred, progress is going in no direction. In the presence of a Section 35 designation, nobody else can go there either. It is essentially a dead development area, which I would have thought the Government would be anxious to avoid.

I am keen to hear what the Minister believes the mechanism is and whether, in the judgment of the Government, it is effective. If it is effective, it should be quite easy to answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on how long it will be before the Ebbsfleet peninsula is de-designated. I suspect that it would be difficult for the Minister to de-designate Heathrow at the Dispatch Box today for a variety of reasons, but I hope that it is clear the direction from which I am coming, and that the Minister in replying can give us some satisfaction on this before we proceed further.