Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Skelmersdale and Lord Deben

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for being a minute late. I thought that we wanted freedom for local authorities—I just do not understand this. If local authorities cannot handle their parking, what on earth are they supposed to handle? I am sorry, but it seems to me to be manifest. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is wrong in both its planning and its parking proposals. Westminster is better at both. I live in Westminster, thank goodness—I do not live in it for that reason, but I thank God for the fact that I live there.

I want to have a local councillor to whom I can talk about the planning in my street. I do not want him coming back and saying, “I am frightfully sorry. The Government have decided we shan’t have this”. It is wholly contrary to the Localism Act we have recently passed. I thought that we were going to do more of that. We are going to give a great deal of power to Manchester. I am very much in favour of that; I hope that we do the same for Sheffield and all the great cities of Britain. I want all that. A fat lot of good it is giving them a hand and then suddenly saying, “You can’t have the parking; we’re going to do it differently”.

This is manifestly not to do with government policy. It is contrary to government policy, and if it is contrary to government policy, would it not be better not to have it? Then everyone would understand that government policy is for localisation and not for telling people that they cannot decide how the parking shall work out in Queen Anne’s Gate. I want to be able to say directly to somebody, “This does not work. Can we do it this way?”. I cannot do that to the Minister—unless he would like us all to come and see him, with every planning problem from around the country. That is the only alternative to what is being proposed here.

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, irrespective of the arguments made on my right and behind me, I have a slightly different problem with the clause. The Bill has been touted by the Government as the great deregulation measure of this Parliament. I am all for deregulation, but this ain’t it. It is a regulation measure. Why on earth is it in the Bill in the first place?