Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Stunell and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Those on low incomes in Cirencester are suffering a double whammy. Their town council is increasing its precept by 4.7% and the police are increasing their precept by 2.9%, at a time when the district and county councils are making the tough decision to freeze council tax. Will my hon. Friend see what can be done to ensure that all precepting authorities keep their increases to a minimum?

[Andrew Stunell]

The Secretary of State has made the Government’s point of view clear. He believes—and I believe—that local authorities and precepting authorities should behave with responsibility in these difficult times. I am sure that his words will have been heard, and I am happy to underline them from the Dispatch Box.

National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Lord Stunell and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stunell]

My hon. Friend is right. I shall deal with some of the specific points that have been raised in a moment, although several of them are quite detailed, and I shall not have time to respond to all 35 Members who have spoken. We will make a serious effort to write to those whom I do not manage to respond to today.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I wonder whether the Minister can answer one point that was raised by a number of Members. Do the Government intend to introduce transitional arrangements, so that local authorities such as mine that were not encouraged to draw up local plans under the old regional spatial strategy system will have time to do so?

[Andrew Stunell]

The hon. Gentleman is a page ahead of me, but I will get there very shortly.

Of all the thousands of comments that have been made about the NPPF so far, very few have challenged the importance of both the simplification and the localisation that we have set out. I would have said that none had done so, but, funnily enough, a former planning Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), said that he was one of those who considered this to be the best of all possible planning systems. His view was somewhat contradicted by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State’s quotation from Lord Rooker, which demonstrated that that simply was not so.

Quite properly, today’s debate has largely concerned the precise shape, the exact wording and the detailed nuances of what we have proposed in the NPPF and the Localism Bill. Let me now deal with some of the key points made by Members. I will begin by tackling what seem to me to be some of the principal issues. One is our use, or rather non-use, of the word “brownfield” . We have referred instead to land of the “least environmental” quality.

There is a clear reason for that. We think that land of the least environmental quality should be taken first, and we recognise that some brownfield land is of high quality. It may be the quarry that has been left for 40 years and is now the next best thing to a self-managed wildlife sanctuary, or it may be back gardens. There are a number of circumstances in which brownfield land may have become recreational. Indeed, there is an example in my constituency that is sufficiently contentious to be prayed in aid. Using brownfield land as a planning category and turning it into the first priority for development will prove to be a mistake in some instances. At the beginning of the debate, my right hon. Friend said in his emollient way that we were taking careful account of all the representations we have received, and we certainly are in that respect.