Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Reay and Lord Judd

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to support this amendment. It is not just my great regard for the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, in his commitment to the best heritage in our society and to preserving it that makes me want to support him but the issue itself. Litter is a menace in our society. It is disfiguring our towns and villages and the countryside. If we really care about our inheritance and preserving what is best, it is no good just having exhortations and principles, which are sometimes enunciated in legislation; it is essential to have some muscle in what is being done to combat it. A few egocentric, selfish people can ruin the environment, whether it be the built environment or the rural environment. It is time that this matter was taken in hand.

I sometimes get a little frustrated in my home community. I have the pleasure of being the president of the Friends of the Lake District—which, of course, represents the CPRE in the whole of Cumbria—but I sometimes reflect in my own neighbourhood of the community how people who take tremendous pains and care with their own gardens and their own estates seem to abandon responsibility when they move outside the garden gate. We have to promote a sense of community commitment on this, followed through with legislation consisting not only of words but the means to make it happen.

It is not an accident that nations that are healthy socially and economically have a great deal of civic pride. I sometimes think that it is a good way of measuring the state of psychology of a nation. If a nation is in good heart, there is a much better chance that all these matters will be taken seriously. On the other hand, it is a two-way argument, because if we let things slip people lose interest. They lose their sense of civic pride and their sense of belonging to a community and needing to make sure that our community is strong and prosperous. It all goes together psychologically. From this standpoint, I thoroughly commend the amendment that has been brought back at Third Reading. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was absolutely right to bring it back at this stage.

[Lord Reay]

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said and I strongly support the amendment.

Like my noble friend, I did not think very much of the Minister’s arguments for not accepting my noble friend’s amendment on Report. He argued that we could wait and see how it worked out in London when London boroughs get powers under the latest London Local Authorities Bill to issue the registered keepers of vehicles with civil penalties where enforcement officers witness littering from a vehicle. I thought that argument had some plausibility.

However, London is not the country. Litter thrown from vehicles is a particular scourge of the countryside. People driving through the countryside may feel themselves more likely to be unobserved and so more prone to commit the offence. They may well be right. Creating this new offence may work better in towns than it will in the country—we simply do not know—but I suggest that the logical thing to do would be to allow it to be tried out in different parts of the country. My noble friend’s amendment would enable this to happen by permitting local authorities who are particularly keen to do so to take action.

I hope the Government will accept the amendment. If they do not and do not say that they have now changed their minds and intend to introduce, at the earliest opportunity, a new national offence along the lines of my noble friend’s amendment, I hope my noble friend will press his amendment to a Division and I shall certainly support it.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Reay and Lord Judd

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reay]

My Lords, the present appeal system is unbalanced. Developers have an untrammelled right of appeal against the refusal of any planning application by a local planning authority. The appeal goes to a planning inspector—usually at a public inquiry—who hears the case as if for the first time. He can reverse the local planning authority’s decision on whatever grounds he chooses. Local communities, on the other hand, have no right of appeal. Once a planning permission is given by the local planning authority, that is the end of the story.

Prior to the general election, that was a situation that both the parties now in government recognised was unfair and promised to redress. Open Source Planning, which set out Conservative planning policy, promised to make the system symmetrical both by allowing appeals against local planning decisions from local residents—the broad purpose of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter—and by limiting the grounds on which developers could appeal to, first, where the correct procedure had not been followed, whereby cases were to be dealt with by the Local Government Ombudsman, and, secondly, where the decision contravened the local plan. I believe that Liberal Democrat policies were similar.

Both those policies would have advanced the principle of localism; both have now been abandoned by the Government. The arguments they use are incoherent. In opposing the third-party right of appeal, the Minister said that he wanted fewer appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and more decided locally. In that case, why not limit the developer’s right of appeal?

Planning policy has been captured by the Treasury, which seems to believe that any balance in planning policy threatens economic growth, and the Treasury is no doubt being cheered on by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, desperate to carpet the country with its useless wind farms.

I wholeheartedly support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Parminter, which seeks to reintroduce a community right of appeal. Such a right of appeal must clearly be circumscribed in some way and, as she explained, the amendment limits those entitled to appeal to local ward councillors and local parish councils.

However, there is one condition that my noble friend has introduced which I question, and I have tabled Amendment 170CCA to remove it—namely, that an appeal can go forward only if the planning officer recommends refusal. In other words, only in cases where the local authority had granted a planning application against the recommendation of the planning officer would the community right of appeal come into play. For the community, everything would hinge on what the planning officer recommended. If the planning officer recommended acceptance, and the local authority endorsed that recommendation, then the community would have no right of appeal.

That seems to me to give too much power to the planning officer. I do not see why it is the unelected planning officer who will in effect be able to decide whether there is any right of appeal against the decision of the local planning authority. If my amendment, and that of my noble friend to which mine is an amendment, were adopted, the effect would be that, whatever the recommendation of the planning officer, the community would have a right of appeal against decisions of the local planning authority. That seems to me to be more democratic.

Amendment 170CF, the other amendment in my name, seeks to deal with the developers’ right of appeal. That was suggested to me by the CPRE. I do not feel committed to it in its present form; indeed, I can see that there are reasons why it might be preferable to have a simpler amendment that would require any appeal to be confined to where the original decision by the local planning authority had contravened the local plan. If the refusal of the local planning authority were in conformity with the local plan, the developer would have no right of appeal. That would put Conservative and perhaps also Liberal Democrat policy back to where it was before the election. It would also chime with what Ministers keep saying about their wish to make the local plan sovereign, as my noble friend has pointed out. Would the Minister be tempted by such an amendment?

On the other hand, if the Government were to persist in their refusal to allow a community right of appeal, and at the same time do nothing whatever to limit the current right of appeal of the developer, so allowing the present unlevel playing field to be maintained, they would have revealed their words about wishing to ensure that fewer decisions go to public inquiry to be much empty waffle. The intentions that they express to give primacy to local concerns would be exposed as insincere, sacrificed to the Treasury's false belief that this is the way to get economic growth going and to the lunacy of the Government’s climate change fanatics.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Reay, is nothing if not challenging intellectually. I find myself very much in support of some of the issues which he raises in his amendment, but I do not support one of them. On one point, I strongly disagree with him. The profession of the planning officer is a very honourable and demanding one, and with all the subjective pressures which operate in society—sometimes very crudely with very considerable amounts of money and innuendo about possibilities and non-possibilities—it is very important to have the objectivity of a professional in the middle who can look at the law and at the overall social challenges and get matters right. It seems to me that, if a person has put his profession on the line and made a particular recommendation, that is very important in deciding whether an appeal is appropriate. I am afraid that on that issue I strongly disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Reay.

I certainly do not see my role in this House as helping to put the Conservative or Liberal Democrat policy back on course, but we have a responsibility to try to be objective and to see valid points that are made and, when they are made, to support them. In the middle of this, there are some very important and valid points. I referred to some of them in an intervention on a previous amendment. I am deeply concerned about the trend towards putting commercial economic interests above social, environmental and scenic issues. I strongly support anything that can be done to increase the well-being and dynamism of our economy—of course I want that—but my thinking does not totally coincide with that of the noble Lord, Lord Reay, as I also believe very strongly that wind power has a contribution to make. I put it to the noble Lord that if you have alternative energy, it will always be an aggregate of less dramatic quantities of energy than we have had from some of the methods with which we are familiar.

Therefore, I do not think it is an issue of being on the side of wind power or against it. I am very worried by those who turn anti-wind power positions into a kind of ideological cornerstone. The issue is where you put the wind farms; and the issue is how you take into account the social challenges and social needs, so that you do not end up with the least articulate members of society becoming the waste bin for all projects because everyone else has been able to fight them off. There is a huge social planning job to be done, but planning will succeed only if it carries the sympathy and understanding of the population as a whole. There is of course a great deal to take seriously in the Government’s position, about making democracy as meaningful and relevant as it possibly can be, and as near to the people as possible. Therefore, the position of the communities is crucially significant.

I believe that, if one looks at the Bill as a whole—not just on this issue, but on a lot of the issues that have been so painstakingly debated by colleagues in the course of the Bill—there is a very strange underlying paradox. The name of the Bill, and the cause of the Bill, is localism and enhancing local democracy; the effect of the Bill is an unprecedented concentration of central power. That has to be countered. It seems to me that from that standpoint the noble Lord is right. It is of course a great temptation to have increased authority for the Secretary of State at the centre, and all his civil servants working with him. If I was a civil servant with responsibilities in this area, I would get terribly vexed and frustrated at all this local democracy that was getting in the way of absolute logic; but if we are to have such increased authority at the centre, then it is very important that we make sure that there are firm rules about how that frustration is brought into play.

I think that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Reay, does something helpful: it in a sense takes the whole theoretical purpose of the Bill, and says, “Right, if we really mean what we say here, we must have codes by which the Minister is operating in his decisions which override local wishes, and we must make sure that those are limited, and that they are clear, explicit, and understood”. As for the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, she is absolutely right: it is a charade, a nonsense and a provocation to talk about a Localism Bill and then deny the community the right to appeal. Of course the community should have that right.

I conclude by making one point again—and I know that the Minister, who has not himself been participating in this debate, has been very good on this issue, and very sympathetic and understanding, as have some of his colleagues. If we talk about the importance of generating a vigorous economy, and giving priority to the measures that are necessary to make our economy strong, why do we want this? It is because we want a decent, civilised place in which to live. We want to have a society worth living in, and such a society needs a strong economy underpinning it. That is the whole point about the issue of balance: how do we ensure that we have strong policies, but at the same time that they are not so unduly, at the price of the quality of the wider dimensions of our society? That is why I repeatedly come back to the point of how previous generations ruined the countryside unnecessarily: we can now see with hindsight that it could all have been done much better. I think that the noble Lord is right, again, to be vigilant on these issues, although I profoundly disagree with him on some of his observations. I hope that the Government will take seriously what he and the noble Baroness have been arguing in their amendments.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Reay and Lord Judd

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. This is a crucial amendment and I hope that the Minister can respond. We are all agreed that the Bill is about meeting a challenge that is overwhelming and on which literally our future survival depends. We therefore cannot have the luxury of simply talking about principles and objectives without having the means to deliver them.

Some 80 per cent of the emissions in this country originate in local communities—in our homes, workplaces, travel and the rest. Therefore, it is crucial, as my noble friend said, that if we are to deliver the results and not just spell out hopes, we must work effectively with local authorities. The only point that I would make in addition to her real commitment is to say that it is my view—I speak for myself but I hope my noble friend will agree—that if this is going to be meaningful there will have to be very specific objectives spelt out to the local authorities about what is expected of them.

We have a national aggregate target, which we then disaggregate into what is required locally. Each local authority should be in no doubt whatever about what is expected of that local authority to meet the national target and local authorities should be expected to give convincing evidence that progress is being made. I am fairly confident—in fact I am very confident—that the Minister agrees with the spirit of what I am saying. I hope that he can not only respond to my noble friend’s amendment but give reassurance that this will not just be another chapter in the world of aspirations and good intentions but will actually spell out a sea change in terms of having the levers there to get results.

[Lord Reay]

I strongly oppose these amendments. At Second Reading, I declared that I was against introducing local carbon budgets into the Bill, although unfortunately I was not able to be present in Committee when the issue was debated on amendments brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and my noble friend Lord Deben. The ultimate purpose of these amendments is, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has explained, to oblige local authorities to do more to see that carbon emissions are reduced in their areas and, in effect, to coerce them into making a greater contribution towards achieving the Government’s renewable energy targets. However, in Committee, it was represented as being an opportunity rather than an obligation for local authorities, and one that they were longing to be given—“unanimously” at one point, said the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. I refer to col. GC 231 of Hansard of 26 January 2011.

No doubt there are keen protagonists of the Government’s renewable energy policy in positions of authority in local government who would welcome such an imposition. However, it surely stretches incredulity to refer to a general—let alone a unanimous—call from local authorities to be given such an obligation. Indeed, if local authorities reflect, as they might be expected to, the wishes of their electorates, I would anticipate a very minor interest in the subject; and, from some who are aware of some of the likely effects of introducing carbon budgets, a most violent opposition.

Legally established local carbon budgets would be likely to have the same sort of effect as regional renewable energy targets have had, and still have today, although they are due to be abolished under the Localism Bill. These have had one most malign effect: they are used by developers, some local authorities and also some planning inspectors to justify the most abominable decisions to permit gigantic wind farms in entirely inappropriate rural locations. It is developers, anxious to drink deep at the well of subsidies before the well dries up—as it has started to do throughout Europe—who would latch on to local carbon budgets and use them as another weapon in their hands in their tireless and far too successful efforts to use the financial advantage that subsidies give them to buy their way to victory in our planning system, as they appeal against every decision that goes against them and so triumph over the wishes of anguished but financially outbid local communities.

I appreciate that behind this amendment, and indeed behind this Bill as a whole, lies a belief that we must strive to meet carbon emission reduction targets for which we have assumed legal obligations. This is not the occasion to argue in detail for alternatives to that policy. However, I believe the cost that we have assumed for the purpose of meeting those targets is far too high and that we should be looking for ways to reduce the cost rather than meet the targets.

One of the greatest of those costs is of course that to the poor electricity consumer, whose bills are programmed to ratchet up each year into the indefinite future to pay for the ever-rising renewable energy subsidies. The current cost, according to Ofgem, is around £1.5 billion a year but is due to rise to some £5 billion or £6 billion by 2020—a miserable prospect for all those in fuel poverty, whose plight has been vividly described by others in this debate such as my noble friend Lady Maddock and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. Another of those costs is the destruction of our beautiful landscapes, which are famous and loved throughout the world, which our planning system has, to date, largely preserved and which the present Government seem so nonchalantly to ignore. Because the acceptance of these amendments would confirm how little we care about that threat, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reject both of these amendments.