Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Clause 133 allows the Mayor of London to step in and carry out default actions on plan-making when local authorities in London—London boroughs, presumably—are failing in some aspect of it. It also includes combined authorities, which is a new proposal that requires a little thought. I can understand that in combined authorities that have mayors the mayor may be thinking of becoming a sort of regional version of the Mayor of London, but in practice the position will be quite different, even when the mayors are elected. In combined authorities where there is not going to be a mayor, the position will be even more different.
The Greater London Authority is set up clearly by Act of Parliament as a freestanding authority and that is how it operates. Combined authorities were initially formed from the bottom up through a number of local authorities coming together and asking permission of the Secretary of State to set up the combined authority and to take on particular powers that they had negotiated between them. The situation is a little different now following the most recent legislation, the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act, which gives the Secretary of State more powers over the formation of combined authorities and their functions. It extends their possible functions beyond those that they originally could have had under the 2008 Act. However, despite that, the whole ethos and idea of combined authorities is expressed by the words “combined authorities”—they come together voluntarily to do things that they can do better together than separately. This proposal seems to suggest that, because they exist, the Secretary of State in future can use them as a convenient place to put in extra powers at will.
My question is as follows. There may well be an authority that is part of a combined authority and which is not carrying out its plan-making functions very well, and the Secretary of State wants to intervene. The implications of using that combined authority to carry out those plan-making functions—in relation to a development plan document or whatever—against the wish of the authority concerned need careful thought.
Combined authorities in most parts of England are not going to work unless they work on a voluntary basis in relation to the members of those combined authorities. I speak as a member of an authority that, in about an hour’s time, will be voting to join a combined authority or to join an application for a combined authority, so we have been looking at this carefully. The whole principle has to be of authorities coming together voluntarily, pooling powers in particular areas and doing so in a way that has consensus and agreement around the combined authority. If it allows some bureaucracy or some other council in the combined authority or a majority vote on the combined authority—whatever it is—to overrule a particular authority on something like this, I am not saying that it is going to destroy the combined authority, but it is going to make life much more difficult and change the whole culture and idea of coming together voluntarily as a combined authority.
That is the point that I am making. I do not know whether the Minister is going to be able to give me a coherent answer to that this evening because it is a slightly obscure and complicated issue, but I ask the Ministers to go away and ask their civil servants to think about it and come back with an answer to these genuine problems. I am not trying to be awkward at all on this; I understand the need to find ways of doing things in default in a sensible way if it is necessary. I beg to move.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the words of my noble friend Lord Greaves on these amendments. I reside in one of the combined authorities. In fact, it is perhaps the flagship combined authority: Greater Manchester. It consists of 10 planning authorities: 10 local authorities, all of which are planning authorities. I had regarded the introduction of this power of the Secretary of State to intervene as very much an attempt to make sure that the missing 30% of planning authorities caught up. I thought that it was more of a time-limited provision; that once all 100% of local planning authorities had got their plans properly approved, this particular provision would lapse, because they would, after all, from then onwards, be able to keep up.
Therefore, it is worth looking at the starting point. I do not know, without research that I have not done, whether any of the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester has failed to register its plans. It is a small number of local authorities working in very close concert, notwithstanding the considerable political divisions between the leadership of the different councils. I do not simply mean party divisions: long-standing rivalries, even in local authorities run by the same party, have been overcome to a remarkable extent in setting up the combined authority. As I said at the start, it is very much a flagship combination that has come together.
I very much support what my noble friend Lord Greaves said about the disruptive effect of basically giving them statutory powers to discipline each other for being naughty boys and girls. I ask the Minister to take that point away and consider whether this is the right vehicle. It might be perfectly in order for the Mayor of London to discipline one or other of the 33 boroughs in London—I am not aware of what their situation is—but I am sure that the Minister can imagine the noise that would be created if the current mayor were to step in on a borough of a different political persuasion. And after the mayoral election, the inverse situation might easily arise. So this is not without trouble ahead, when what the Minister actually wants to achieve is valid local plans as quickly as possible. That is an aim which I support, but he might have a mechanism that is more self-destructive than he realises.