Localism Bill

Lord Reay Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, my Amendment 166VZC is grouped, and I of course support my noble friend Lord McKenzie's amendment. My amendment is designed to be a helpful contribution to Ministers. As we have not seen the NPPF, it is a suggestion of what it might contain.

I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. There is not much about rail freight in here, but there might be a bit. The key point is in subsection (2) of the amendment, which tries to set out in more detail how the activities and development of other parts of local authorities, regional authorities, the Government and other people could be made more sustainable if they took into account the cost of environmental issues such as transport. The obvious example is when, two years ago, a lot of law courts were closed in different parts of the country, which meant that people had to travel for long distances and sometimes even stay overnight or pay for taxis because there was no public transport. Of course, the assessment of the benefits of closing law courts did not include anything to do with transport, and one could make the same comment about the closure of hospitals. Therefore, the amendment is intended to try to link planning with transport and to look at the sustainable elements involved.

Transport routes are fundamental in the location of warehouses and distribution sites so as to reduce distances travelled and traffic congestion on busy roads. I have included something about former railway lines. I know that the Government are not yet interested in reopening former railway lines, and I can understand why in the present situation, but a lot of people will be looking at this. I know that it is planned to locate High Speed 2 on some disused railway lines, but there are many other lines in this country which could be used not for railways as such but for cycle ways and other transport routes to get people off congested roads. However, it is very difficult to reinstate corridors for those types of purposes if bits of the land are sold off. Reinstatement costs an enormous amount.

I mention in paragraph (d) under my proposed new Clause 2 in the amendment the need for travel to be minimised and, in paragraph (e), sustainable transport modes for the movement of people and freight. However, it is also useful to talk about, as I do in paragraph (f), public transport, pedestrians, cyclists and disabled people. I believe that in future all these things will have a much greater impact if we are to meet the famous 80 per cent reduction in carbon. That is the Government’s target and I think we all support it but achieving it is going to be pretty challenging. Lastly, paragraph (g) would remove the need to travel so far and would maximise sustainable modes of transport. I do not know whether those points will be in the final version of the NPPF but, if they are not, perhaps the Minister could consider making a few last-minute amendments and including them.

We have talked about the parliamentary requirements, and there is obviously a need for consultation.

Proposed new Clause 5 in the amendment makes yet another attempt at achieving sustainable development. I do not think that I need to go through it with your Lordships now because noble Lords will all have read the NPPF and we all have ideas about what it should contain. However, it certainly demonstrates to me the need to have something like this in the Bill and to have more detail somewhere in the NPPF, as I have tried to do in the amendment.

[Lord Reay]

My Lords, there was considerable discussion in the debate on the previous group of amendments about the national planning policy framework, although there was no mention of it in any of the amendments in that group. We come to it for the first time with these amendments.

I agree with those noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, who said that it is unfortunate that we do not already have the NPPF—the document that is, as I understand it, in 50 or 60 pages going to replace 2,000 pages of PPSs, PPGs and other planning documents that stretch back over 50 years or more. Of course, it will have a very large impact on how the Bill works in practice. I hope that we will have it very shortly, as the Minister said, and debate it.

However, I do not believe that this is the right place to debate the NPPF or to go further and pre-empt it, as the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, seeks to do here in particular, with four pages of text setting out suggested contents for the NPPF. Being an amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, it concentrates on transport and is highly prescriptive in that field. It talks about giving priority to bicycles and pedestrians, installing electric charging points and so forth. I shall not say what I think about any of those details because I simply do not think that this is a suitable moment to debate them. However, what I most certainly do not agree with is a reference in the first amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, to climate change policies. I do not believe that either the NPPF or this Bill should be used to give impetus to the Government’s renewable policies. I shall have more to say about that on a later group of amendments. I hope that the noble Lords who put their names to this amendment have said what they want to say and that they will be able to withdraw their amendments and not reintroduce it.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, we shall come, although not tonight, to clauses in the Bill dealing with national policy statements. Many noble Lords here are veterans of the debates about how national policy statements should or, in many cases, should not be dealt with. Perhaps it is not fair to say, “should not be dealt with”, but perhaps I should say, “should have been dealt with in a more extensive and iterative fashion”.

I use this opportunity to say to the Minister that I hope that by the time we get to Clause 114, on national policy statements, he may be in a better position to explain to the Committee how the national planning policy framework will be dealt with in procedural terms. I cannot gaze into a crystal ball, but I do not think it takes much imagination to guess that we shall debate the role of this House, as this House could make such a contribution to the planning policy framework and to the policy statements. I am sure we shall debate those things. As well as making that plea, I put down a marker for what I have said might be a more iterative and more measured process and certainly for the House to have an opportunity to make more of a contribution than it was able to do on the current arrangements under the Planning Act 2008.