Transport Decarbonisation
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The noble Baroness is quite right. In many areas, and as we shift to a decarbonised economy, we will need greater skills. The Department for Transport is working very closely with our colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education to build that strategy.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD) [V]
My Lords, the two big blocks to people adopting electric vehicles, now that so many are available at high quality, are access to a charger and cost. The Minister mentioned the on-street charger support given to some local authorities, but not all have taken it up. For those with off-street parking, there is a subsidy for the charge box, but people are not guaranteed any help for on-street charging through, for example, a lamppost. Can the Government speed that up? At the same time, can they give certainty to businesses that there will be continuing support for electric vehicles through support for low levels of benefits-in-kind tax?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I think I have gone as far as I can on charging. We recognise that it is one of the greatest challenges facing the take-up of electric vehicles. My colleague the Minister for the Future of Transport is working diligently on making sure that we have the right plan in place for the £1.3 billion we will be investing in it over the next four years. That will be set out in the electric vehicle infrastructure strategy.
Covid-19: Transport
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
On the first issue the noble Lord raised, on public transport, let us be absolutely clear what we are talking about here. Those who cannot work from home and have to travel to work, or those who are making an essential journey, who cannot travel on a bike, by foot or in a car should use public transport. If you can possibly avoid using public transport—as a transport Minister, I cannot believe I am having to say this—you should. Therefore, if you are tempted to use public transport but could actually get on your bike, I suppose it is your civic duty to get on your bike. What we are saying about those who should use public transport and those who should not is absolutely clear.
The noble Lord also talked about getting into a taxi or private hire vehicle, which the transport operators’ guidance also covers. It includes a section on cleaning and hygiene and making sure that your place of work, namely your taxi, is clean and protects subsequent passengers. Therefore, that is what taxi and PHV drivers should be doing.
Finally, on borders—I am aware that I did not answer the noble Lord, Lord Rosser on this issue—we will be doing three main things. International arrivals will have to supply contact and accommodation information, and there will be lots of advice on arrival to support that. They will be advised to download the contact-tracing app and told to self-isolate for 14 days. Noble Lords probably have several other questions on the borders issue but the details have yet to be fully finalised. We do not know exactly how the scheme will work or what the exemptions will be, so I will have to beg noble Lords patience on this one. No doubt we will come back to it in due course.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
Long before Covid hit this country, literally millions of families had booked holidays abroad for this summer, which is now fast-approaching. The Secretary of State and other Ministers have made it clear that they do not believe people should be travelling abroad; the new border requirements will effectively make such a holiday impossible for most people anyway. However, there is no clear statement from the FCO or the Government requiring people not to go abroad, so in many cases they are not able to get their money back. They cannot claim on insurance as it is not a required cancellation; the airlines are flying the flights, so they cannot get their flight money back; and tour companies are in many cases, at best, offering a change of date and refusing refunds.
All that could be sorted out by a clear statement from the Government. In many cases, with earnings down and some unable to earn at all, these families now desperately need that money. The Government cannot expect people to be happy about this; they are being told that they cannot have their holidays, but the Government are not taking the action that would allow them their money back.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The reality at this time is that the Foreign Office is advising against travel overseas, but it does not have a crystal ball. Therefore, it would be impossible to say that up to a certain date in the future—quite far into the future, given that we are only in May—there will be no travel at all. We simply cannot say that.
I too am in this boat. I have a holiday booked. Will I go on it or not? I do not know. This is just one of the things about coronavirus that we have to deal with. I am really hoping that I can still go but, if the Foreign Office advice by then is still, “You must not travel”, there will be ways that people can get their money back. We must not get over-excited about this at this moment. As time progresses, guidance about overseas travel may change. We just have to be alert and try to be patient. I know that it is incredibly difficult. For some people, their holidays may happen; for others they may not, and we can then look at how they get their money back.
Localism Bill
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, perhaps I should start by declaring that I am a landlord of a property that is let through a letting agent in London, and it is in the register of interests. I shall take the amendments in reverse order.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the thrust of Amendment 93, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, although I feel that it is overly prescriptive. No doubt in the private rented sector in particular there is enormous pressure, and we all know that that pressure is going to build and be exacerbated by what his Government are doing on housing benefit. It will put pressure on homelessness in that sector in particular. Of course there is bad practice, and we should support propositions which look to protect vulnerable tenants. He also made the excellent point that the organisations to which tenants traditionally may have looked, such as Citizens Advice, are under pressure because of funding.
Again, I have great sympathy with Amendment 92, but I would like to read the technicalities a bit better. The thrust of it is that it would give the courts some added leeway before actual possession is obtained. In the current climate, if people are being thrown out of their properties, that must be something which should gain our support.
On Amendment 91, I believe that just before we left Government, we did have proposals coming forward to do just what the amendment is seeking. The noble Lord may say that we took too long to get it done, but again I support regulation. It is interesting to note that good providers in the field, the good letting agents, also support this. They know that their reputations can be tarnished by bad practice out there and that they can be undercut by unscrupulous letting agents. We need some proper regulation in this sector.
I am therefore broadly supportive of the thrust of all these amendments. However, given where we are with the Bill, at the Report stage and just about to move out of the housing environment, it will not be until Third Reading that we get to this. I do not know what the Minister will be able to say in winding up the debate that will give us any assurance about progress, but along with the proposers of these amendments, we would like to see progress on all three fronts.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
I rise to speak very briefly. I suspect that for all sorts of reasons Ministers are going to be reluctant to go down the regulatory route and indeed that, while my memory may fail me on this, I had thought that the previous Government ultimately came to that conclusion as well, although they certainly investigated the possibility of taking it. However, I may be wrong. I just want to throw into the discussion that in the absence of regulation we must recognise the absolutely fundamental role the private sector will have in housing all sorts of vulnerable people because there are not enough houses in the social and affordable sectors. Furthermore, these people are often at the lowest end of the private sector market and, in those circumstances, they are very vulnerable. It seems that an opportunity has been consistently missed over the years to reward those landlords in the private sector who behave best and, indeed, to encourage landlords in the private sector to do some of the things associated with social housing.
For example, there is no recognition in the rents that are available through housing benefit if landlords are willing to give longer tenancies, and there is little likelihood of recognition of relative quality. I have never understood why we would allow payments through the state in terms of housing benefit to the worst landlords offering the meanest opportunities and yet do nothing to reward those who behave better. That reward could involve a voluntary system of signing up to charters. In particular there is an issue for tenants in this sector over lack of security. Tenants in the private sector may be elderly and have lived long periods in a house, or they may be people with young children, and yet they may not have any real security in the tenancy. It would encourage landlords to offer security if we were to reward longer periods of tenancy and if we were not to draw such a sharp line that says a brief tenancy gives the landlord the security of being able to get the property back or the tenants become secure and highly protected. Why cannot we have something in between and why cannot we reward landlords for such behaviour? I think the Minister is going to be averse to regulation but perhaps he will be a little bit more supportive of an approach that uses the carrot rather than the stick.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, my namesake reads the situation pretty well and makes a very thoughtful contribution, as he always does on housing matters, rural housing in particular. It has been a very useful debate. In principle we have discovered the difficulties of an imperfect world where not everybody behaves as they should. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, did not get hissed at when he declared his interest as a landlord because it is important that landlords are recognised as having an important part to play. Many of the amendments introduced by my noble friend are directed at encouraging landlords to maintain high standards. The question is whether regulation is the way to deal with this problem, particularly given the need not only to deal with the current situation but to plan and develop this sector for the future, because we all know that it is an area which will need considerable investment.
Amendment 91 makes proposals for the regulation of letting and management agencies. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said he was going to speak to Amendment 92 but he meant Amendment 91 because that is what he spoke to. Around two-thirds of landlords let and manage their property through an agent so it is important that they can rely on a good service. We are aware of poor practice within the letting and management agent sector but regulation already exists in this area. Between a third and a half of all agents belong to voluntary schemes which set standards and offer redress when things go wrong, including client money protection. Unfortunately, far too few consumers of the agency system—both landlords and tenants—are aware of the risks of using an unregulated agent. I am delighted that the Government have been able to endorse the Safe Agent Fully Endorsed scheme—SAFE—recently launched by the industry which highlights a key risk around clients’ money. We want to explore these voluntary approaches further before a move to statutory regulation but we do not rule this out in the longer term. However, we cannot support the introduction of enabling powers where we have no plans for their use.
Amendment 92 in this group would extend the court’s discretion to postpone awarding possession of dwellings. We do not think this is necessary. We estimate that, even using an accelerated procedure available under the legislation, gaining possession through the courts takes at least six months. That is more than enough time for a tenant to find alternative accommodation and it already places a significant burden on landlords, particularly in cases where rent arrears are accumulating.
On Amendment 93, my noble friend Lord Palmer joined my noble friend Lord Shipley in presenting the argument for local authorities’ tenancy relations services. We agree that both landlords and tenants in the private sector should have access to advice and support, but local authorities already provide such advice through their housing options services. This advice is supplemented by existing powers to deal with poor practices by landlords. We therefore see no need to legislate further. New legislation would have the effect of restricting local authorities in their existing work and quite possibly add burdens simply in order to reinforce what is already there.
All the amendments pursue a proper ambition: to raise the standard in the industry. In the case of letting and management agents, we acknowledge that some bad practice exists. I have considerable sympathy with those who have been caught out by bad practice, but for the reasons that I have set out we do not think that regulation now is the right answer. Therefore, I ask my noble friends not to press their amendments.
Localism Bill
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, on this point there is of course a fundamental difference between how parishes are viewed inside and outside urban areas. I understand all the misgivings as far as rural parishes are concerned and do not wish to follow along that line, but it would perhaps not be wise to add my noble friend's suggestion to the Bill. I point out that in the recent referendum in my own authority which I referred to, the area chosen for it was in fact the boundary of a parish because that ran across more than one ward. It is not right to write that into statute but it reinforces the point that I and other noble Lords made earlier: that some power to enable local authorities to define an area, which might or might not be a parish, would be a useful broad, localist and permissive power. I would not favour writing it into the Bill in this way but it may be one of the instruments and measures that a local authority ought to be allowed to choose other than a ward.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, I have a particular interest in this amendment because parishes in many rural communities are far more relevant than local authority or council boundaries. They are not only historic but often relate to particular communities in a way that local authority wards do not, certainly in my part of the country. That is because wards are driven by numbers, not by community. This seems a good and proper issue to raise. There is of course already the power for parishes to call their own referendums, so the query might be whether this is necessary because, if a community wanted it, one might argue that there is provision for it already.
However, the legislation here is making reference to particular issues relating to local authorities. Frankly, I therefore see more relevance to allowing a power in relation to a parish as a community than to having specific reference to the electoral division for the primary local authority. I would hope that the Minister can respond positively to the principle here, whatever the means might be to achieve it.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I think that I can respond positively. I say to my noble friend and namesake that I do not know how big Goss Moor is, but Holbeach has a population of some 8,500 people in one parish. Some parishes are remarkably large and other parishes are remarkably small, so it is very difficult. One size, or system, fitting all is very difficult. There are provisions, of course, for a local referendum, or parish poll, under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972, to which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, has referred.
The amendment would include parishes in the definition of a “relevant area” as that applies to a principal local authority. We do not think that this is appropriate, particularly because we are looking at how we might look at referendums at parish level in legislation within the Bill and as a result of a consultative process, as I said before. Indeed, I mentioned to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that I foresaw his organisation being very much involved in this consultative process.
Our approach to local referendums is to enable referendums on local matters at the relevant council area, but for the issue at hand. If it is a district council matter, or a matter over which the district council has influence, the referendum can be held at the district council level, whether it be across one or more wards of the district, or the entire area of the district council, but it is the district council that is the triggering authority for this poll, other than having a parish poll. If it is a parish matter, we believe that a parish poll is the most appropriate method. We will discuss our intended approach to parish council referendums later, and I can assure noble Lords that the parish sector will be fully catered for. We want to see a modernised and proportionate local referendums regime for parishes, on which we will fully consult. I hope, therefore, that with these assurances my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
My difficulty is that I do not know what that regime might be, or even what the Government are talking about. Whether the Minister will give a little more information when we touch briefly on Clause 56 later, I do not know, but I will not talk about that now.
Let me just give one example. In the parish of Laneshaw Bridge, which is in Pendle in the ward of Boulsworth, a huge issue that has split the village is the question of whether the village school should be very considerably expanded to take in a much larger area than the village. The village was split. Nobody knows what the majority opinion in the village is; what we know is that there were campaigning groups on both sides. Yet a referendum within Boulsworth ward relating to that issue—which would be a classic and typical example of a referendum—would be irrelevant, because the village is only one fifth or so of the entire ward. The rest of the ward consists of another much larger village, another couple of larger villages in a different parish, in which I live, and part of the town of Colne. Having the referendum in that arbitrary area would be irrelevant to knowing what the people of Laneshaw Bridge think.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
I strongly support my noble friend on this. The issue is not whether the matter is one which lies with the local authority or with the parish—that is readily understood and, if it lies with the parish, the parish poll would suffice—but it may well be a matter which lies for decision with the local authority but only affects a small community. It is the nature of rural local authority wards that they often cover a number of communities, many of which would not be affected by the issue at hand, even though it is the local authority that is the decision taker. That is the issue that was not really responded to earlier.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to my noble friend for making the point more strongly and better than I did. There is clearly an issue here and it is clearly one that will continue to be discussed. We look forward with interest to seeing the Government’s proposals for parishes, but the continuation of the point made by my noble friend Lord Taylor is: who pays for the referendum? If it is a district, county or unitary issue, surely that authority should pay for the referendum and the cost of it should not fall upon the parish council, which may well have a view on the matter and be involved in the discussions, but is not responsible in any way for the issue before the referendum. That is a very important matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made the point that there is possible provision in the Bill for local authorities to define appropriate local areas which are not co-incident with ward boundaries. It seems to me that a provision that they should be one polling district or a collection of polling districts is one that ought to be looked at by the Government, because polling districts, by their very nature, already have the machinery in place for elections, yet polling districts in most wards are smaller than the wards of which they form part. I put that suggestion to the Government and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Localism Bill
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment, because it goes to the heart of the fundamental issue of how our body politic and administrative systems work. The amendment essentially sets out what we want to do in a Bill called the Localism Bill, before we discuss how to do it. That is an important reminder of what we should put in front of those who draft these things, because in this country, unlike many others, when we talk about empowering people, the assumption is that somehow Whitehall has to define every element of it, in particular because it may otherwise be subject to legal challenge. Other countries give a power of competency at a local level and look to those who exercise those powers to defend the manner in which they have done so rather than rely on the crutch of how the national tier has defined what they should do.
By definition, having a Bill of this size that calls itself the Localism Bill illustrates the flaw inherent in our body politic: we do not understand the principle of devolving decision-taking to others or that that decision-taking has to involve devolution of responsibility for the “how”, not just the principle of the “what”. One does not have to have spent much time talking with the Local Government Association or others to realise the many reservations of powers to Ministers that are inherent in the Bill, which is an inch-and-a-half thick. It cannot be right that a Bill that is about empowering local communities has to be defined in that kind of detail, although I suspect that that is not so much a flaw of the Bill but of the system—let us not forget that the Bill amends many other Acts and, if they were all here, I do not think that I could hold the Bill in my hand.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I take issue with my noble friend Lord Taylor only to the extent that we should start with not just the “how” but the “why”. It does not matter what you call something, provided you do not then use your term as an excuse for sloppy thinking. That is a danger. It would be easy during our debates on the Bill to say that such-and-such is local or localist, without analysing what that means and what it should mean in each context.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred to Pepper v Hart. I must say that it worries me when people who have not been closely involved with our proceedings say, “Parliament clearly must have thought such-and-such”, and one wonders whether Parliament has thought at all about a particular issue.
Representative democracy is so valuable for lots of reasons, but I have written down four: balance, priorities, nuance, and wide objectives. When the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, spoke about community groups being self-selecting, I thought that she was going to say that they were self-serving—just occasionally, they are and I, too, recognise the examples she gave. The issue of bail hostels precluded my party from taking control of our local authority in 1978. My noble friend Lady Tonge was elected in a by-election shortly afterwards, having failed to be elected at that earlier point. However, the issue was of concern in a community that one should have thought was most sympathetic to the problem that the establishment of the bail hostel was addressing. The centre has a role, but its role is not to protect local people against their own local authority.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, asked what the clause would achieve. It sets criteria against which the detail of the Bill can be tested. Something that is superficially local or localist is not sufficient.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, this is an extremely important amendment. Although my noble friend proposes it as a probing amendment, I hope Ministers may come to recognise that incorporating a clear and balanced definition of sustainable development in the Bill is fundamental to the workings of a Bill that is predicated on sustainable development. It is important to set out this definition in statute and not simply in the proposed national planning policy framework.
I declare my interests in this area: I chair the strategic partnership that is delivering an eco-community in Cornwall, which is all about these issues; I chair the National Housing Federation, which takes an interest in these issues; and I chair in a voluntary capacity the Rural Coalition, which brings together some 14 national bodies with a particular interest in the sustainable development of rural communities, including Britain’s major planning bodies and organisations such as CPRE and CLA. All these bodies have expressed concern about the absence of a proper and balanced definition.
I have taken an interest in this issue for more than 20 years, but did so most particularly when I was asked by the previous Government to carry out a review of rural planning on a non-partisan basis in relation to economic development and housing—the Living Working Countryside report. The first chapter concentrated on the way in which the term “sustainable development” can lead to perverse consequences when people do not use a balanced definition. Too often, developments have been refused because sustainability is seen in purely environmental terms, not in terms of the sustainability of communities and the rural economy. Exactly the same criticism could be made the other way around, if sustainability is seen too often simply in terms of economic development. I share the concerns expressed about the proposed definition.
This issue is not without consequences. It directly filters down to the way in which decisions that profoundly affect the sustainability of communities are taken at the local level. In the review, I said something else that is important here. The sustainability of communities, when we are looking at how they develop, is not about a judgment on whether that community is sustainable, because one might argue that many communities, if started from scratch, would not be created in the form that they are. The question is always: does change contribute to enhancing the economic, social and environmental sustainability of that community, or does it detract from it? It is a moving target and we should not seek perfection before we allow change. It is perfection that we are striving towards—not that we can achieve it at any given moment.
For all these reasons, it is fundamental that Parliament is clear about what we mean by a presumption in favour of sustainable development, and we cannot have that clarity if we do not set out in statute a proper definition of it. The meaning that we may each take may be different. One reason that I rise to speak is that, the more we put on the record what we mean by these issues, the more likely it is that we will get the right consequences. I simply do not believe that we should empower something so fundamental if it is simply part of the planning guidance, rather than the statute itself, and is easily amendable.
It is fundamentally obvious that if we believe that this sustainable development is important to the legislation, if we believe that it is an important principle in how this country should go forward, and if we believe that it is important to how we develop communities, we should at least be clear about what we mean by it. Having been involved in these debates for 20-odd years, I learnt long ago that if one talks simply about sustainable development, a large part of the audience is unlikely to know what you are talking about at all, and the rest of the audience thinks it knows what you are talking about, but if you do not explain it, you are liable to find out that everyone has a completely different idea of it, depending on their particular vested interest.
I regard it as something of an achievement of the Rural Coalition that we bring together such a diverse range of views, which is perhaps best epitomised by the involvement of the CPRE on the one hand and the CLA on the other. We have always agreed that getting the balance right is fundamental, and that it should be set out at this stage in the legislation. While this may be a probing amendment, I hope that we will get from the Minister a commitment to bring something into statute and agree that the definition should be balanced and forward looking about what we can achieve, not simply an assessment of the status quo.
Lord Lawson of Blaby
My Lords, this has been an instructive exchange, so far. No one has been able to define sustainable development and, indeed, the Bill does not define it. There is a simple reason for that, because the term “sustainable development” is totally meaningless. It is one of those cant expressions that grew up with the Brundtland report—perhaps a bit earlier; but that report referred to it—and is meant to feel good, but has absolutely no meaning whatever.
The right reverend Prelate attempted to define sustainable development as the type of development that he approves of. He is perfectly entitled to approve of some forms of development more than others, but that is not the sort of thing that you can put in a Bill, and quite rightly so. We live in a developed economy that has been developing for at least 1,000 years. That seems to be pretty sustainable to me. I cannot think what is unsustainable about it. It has also, importantly, led to a considerable rise in living standards among a greatly increased population.
Look at the developing world: that is what they want to do, too. They have great poverty and they want the sort of development that we have had in the developed countries. They say, “Now we are going to do that”. The idea that there is something unsustainable about it is proven to be false by the fact that it has been going on for 1,000 years or more—much more, in fact. The idea that sustainable development has any meaning whatever is clearly nonsense. It is a great pity that the Government put the phrase in the Bill. If they had not, we would not have this ridiculous debate. At least, I commend them on not attempting to define something which has no meaning whatever.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I enjoyed what my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor said, and I would like to hear more about that, but I hope that we do not embark on a definition in the Bill for something that, in all practical terms, will be impossible to define in practice. Not only will it have the effect described by my noble friend Lord True, but for neighbourhood plans, anything of this sort will make any power that the neighbourhood has completely nugatory because it will always be open to attack by someone who has their own definition and own ways of looking at sustainable development in any particular circumstance. We have an example in east Hampshire where a decision has been taken that sustainable development means that there should be no new development of any sort in the countryside. In other words, to fit in with that strategic objective, there can be no neighbourhood plans because there can be no development. That is all based on sustainable development.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
If I may say so, that is precisely why, if we are to have a Bill that makes the definition of sustainable development the whole basis of our planning system, we should say what we mean. It was precisely the issue mentioned by the noble Lord that led me to start my report by saying that we need to ensure that our approach to sustainable development is properly defined as a balance between economic and social environmental interests, is forward looking and is not an assessment of the countryside as unsustainable.
Lord Lucas
I therefore think that this is a very important thing to get right. I shall listen to the Minister with great interest. If we get it wrong, it has the potential to destroy a very important part of the Bill.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I understand that this is a probing amendment and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. The Government are not unsympathetic to the attempt to describe “sustainable development”. In fact, they have already done so on two occasions. They support the Brundtland definition, and their statement on maintaining sustainable development, published in February this year, includes a commitment to embed these principles across government policy. Therefore, it is not only in this Bill that the sustainable development is likely to come about.
We accept that there is a strong relationship between the Government’s approach and the ambitions of this Bill. However, whether we can spell it out in a way that is acceptable on four fronts is probably more difficult. It would put it on to a statutory framework that is a lawyers’ paradise. The expectation and understanding is that local people will be best placed to understand what is right for sustainable development locally, and noble Lords may have become aware of the definitions that have appeared in the consultation on presumption in favour of sustainable development that has just been published.
On the planning system, we believe that there is a presumption in favour of sustainable development at the heart of the new planning system. We will look to local planning authorities to prepare local plans on the basis of objectively assessed development needs and with sufficient flexibility to respond to rapid shifts of economic change. They should approve without delay development proposals that accord with statutory plans—noble Lords opposite mentioned that—and should grant permission where the plan is absent, silent or indeterminate, or where relevant policies are out of date.
That issue is one of planning. Noble Lords also referred to the generality. February’s Statement made clear the Government's view that there are three pillars—the economy, society and the environment—which are interconnected. We recognise that long-term economic growth relies on protecting and enhancing the environmental resources that underpin it, and on paying regard to social needs. Those are the principles of sustainable development that we need to take forward.
I will resist, at least for the moment, having a definition such as that put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Tope. If there was ever going to be a definition, we would need to be very clear and sure that it would be legally unchallengeable, because definitions never define the whole process and all the opportunities; sometimes they are restricting rather than helpful. Some of my noble friends behind me may be slightly sad about this. I say to them that in general the Government have some sympathy with sustainable development. As I have indicated, they have already made commitments on the subject. However, I regret to say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that his proposed new clause would not be helpful at this stage.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, I will speak briefly. I welcome two aspects of what the Minister said. The first is her reiteration of the Government’s support for the principles of sustainable development, which is important. The second is the fact—I have listened carefully and will read Hansard later—that she did not rule out setting out these principles in the Bill. We will have to see whether we can convince the Government to do it. Their open-mindedness at this point is very welcome.
I say to those who think that a thousand years of economic development prove that we do not need sustainable development that in that time some civilisations collapsed as a result of the overuse of their resources; I refer to central America, the desertification of the north African coast and, in my own area of Cornwall, the disappearance of the herring trade. Today we see more profound impacts on the environment, such as the destruction of the rainforests, and we should not sit content in this country and assume, just because until now we have survived quite well when others have not, that we have greater wisdom than civilisations that collapsed before us.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, again I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this debate, which has been slightly enlightening and has taken us forward a little. I am particularly grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter and to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor for their strong support. As I listened to my noble friend just now, I thought that the greatest economic growth in this country during the past few hundred years was the Industrial Revolution, and how much better that revolution would have been—surely it would not have been stymied in any serious way—if environmental considerations had played a much greater part in development during that period instead of the massive attacks on the physical environment: the quality of air and all the rest of it. It has cost an enormous amount of money to clean it up since. It is not just economic growth, is it? It is the way you do it; it is regulation in ways that protect the environment and finding ways in which economic growth can be environmentally beneficial.
Railways: Investment
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we do not intend to short-change Wales. Wales will benefit from the electrification; indeed, Wales would benefit even if we electrified only to Bristol because the journey time to London will be reduced and the journeys will be more reliable.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, as someone who travels regularly between Cornwall and London, I have to say that the Statement inspires rather less warm feelings in me than it may in those from some other parts of the country. Again, we see a decision delayed. Can the Minister give some indication of what a decision in the new year means in practice? How quickly will we see a decision on the replacement of Great Western intercity rolling stock? I express my deep concern that, while it is great that making passengers change train has been ruled out, changing the locomotive does not inspire great confidence. I hope that we will see a new diesel/electric hybrid able to run all the way through to Penzance.
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord talks about the difficulties faced by Cornwall and the West Country. I am well aware of the economic difficulties in that part of the country. He talks about the disadvantages of attaching a diesel locomotive to the front of an IEP train. It is an obvious difficulty, which will no doubt be taken into consideration when developing and assessing the business cases.