Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Shipley

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Tope]

I know there is a temporary cessation, but give it another year or two.

I strongly support what my noble friends have said in proposing the amendment. However, there is a particular problem, as my noble friend Lord Greaves said, in all larger urban areas—and Greater London is the largest urban area of them all. The problem is exacerbated because until comparatively recently Greater London was not allowed by law to have any parish councils. Since that became permissible under law—I think a little less than 10 years ago; I cannot remember exactly—there has been only one parish council formed in the whole of Greater London and no others. I do not know how many neighbourhood forums there are in London, and I do not suppose the Minister has this information at his fingertips, but, if it is available, I would be interested to know how many neighbourhood plans have been formed, or are in the course of being formed, in Greater London. Perhaps that will serve to illustrate—or, praise be, to deny—the point that the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and I are making. It is a difficult problem, and while I agree with my noble friends that parishing and parish councils are particularly useful and beneficial to neighbourhood plans, if we are to wait for the whole of Greater London to be parished then neighbourhood plans will be a very long time coming. Clearly, that is not the answer. It is a problem in other places too, but particularly in London.

In London, neighbourhoods are often named after former villages. So we know what a neighbourhood is, but it is a heck of a sight more difficult to decide where the boundaries of those neighbourhoods are. They are most certainly not the ward boundaries, because the wards, particularly in London, are based on arithmetic and not on community at all. For administrative convenience, a neighbourhood forum is likely to adopt ward boundaries, at least in part, but they are not necessarily the historic neighbourhoods. That is a particular problem in London.

I have supported parishing and parish councils all my political life, but while it may be desirable, it will not happen quickly enough for the purposes that we are debating today. Therefore, I would be very interested if the Minister is able to say something about the particular issues and problems in London, to which the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and I have referred.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I hope the Minister will understand that this is a very important issue. The reasons for that have been extremely well explained in the speeches that have been made so far. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, made an extremely helpful and important point, as did others, about the problems that exist. In a nutshell, those problems can be explained as follows. On the first day of Committee, my noble friend Lord Stunell pointed out that emerging neighbourhood plans are showing a greater appetite for more housing, precisely because they have more say in the way in which they build their community. In other words, it is in all our interests to promote neighbourhood planning. However, the second problem is that only around one fifth of the country is engaged in neighbourhood planning. As we know, in those places that do not have parish councils, it is a slower process. But as we also know, you do not have to have a parish council to undertake the neighbourhood planning process.

I hope the Minister will be willing to look at this issue between Committee and Report, because we will be coming back to this on Report. The Bill says that neighbourhood planning is important and must become more important. But as a consequence of that, local planning authorities must do more to promote neighbourhood planning. It is for them to decide whether that is through the creation of more parish councils under the review procedures that exist or through the other means that exist. This is a very important issue. It is not going to help the Bill if we simply end up with not many more people engaged with the process.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Shipley

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend with a small “f”—the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. As he said, we moved a number of amendments at an earlier stage of the Bill and I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for listening so carefully and for taking so seriously the points that we made. The apologies of my noble friend Lord Newton have already been given, but I specifically undertook not only to give his apologies—a hospital appointment prevents his being here—but to pass on his warm thanks to the Minister. Those thanks are perhaps not so much for the extent to which she has moved but for the extent to which she has been able to move those close to her during the proceedings here.

I think that we have moved a very long way from the position that we were in in Committee, when the person replying on the Front Bench said that standards were a matter for local discretion. I am probably one of the greatest localists in your Lordships’ House, but I thought at the time, and feel very strongly now, that if there is one thing that should not be left to local discretion, it is standards in public life. We have got to the point that we have now reached because in the past there has been rather too much discretion over standards in public life.

I am very pleased that we are going to have a mandatory code—or, rather, that it is going to be mandatory to have a code—but I am a little sad that its minimum provisions are not to be the same throughout the country. I think that in reality they will be the same throughout the country, because my expectation is that the great majority of local authorities will simply keep the code that they all already have. My concern relates to what I hope will be a tiny minority of councils that decide not to keep the code that they now have, and it relates more particularly to why they make that decision and in what way they might change it. That leads me to ask the Minister whether there will be any form of monitoring, whether by her department or by the Local Government Association, so that we know what changes are happening throughout the country. There may well be some that are a cause for concern. What we do about them may be another matter, but we should at least know about them.

The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has already told us that he will not be moving his amendment, but my other concern is that councils now have, and will retain, the power as a sanction, if necessary, either to remove councillors from certain committees or sub-committees or simply not to appoint them. Will that also apply to outside bodies, as all councils appoint councillors as their representatives on outside bodies? Will they now also be able to remove a councillor from an outside body to which the council has appointed him or her?

Many councils, including my own, also have local committees or area committees that are constituted and stated in the council’s constitution to comprise all the councillors elected for that area. Presumably there is a power now to remove them from that area committee. Is that the case, and how does that fit with the constitution of the council, which says that all councillors representing that area have a right to be on that committee?

My other concern is about the form of monitoring—I do not mean imposition, but monitoring—there will be to let us know what is happening under the new regime. I certainly am grateful to the Minister for moving us so far on this, but quite a number of us are still concerned about this issue and feel that we are not there yet—well, we are there but this is not perfection and we may well have to return to the issue in the years to come after a number of high profile cases.

My last point is to welcome the lengths to which Ministers have now moved in the appointment of an independent person and in trying to ensure as far as possible that that person is genuinely independent and open. That independent person now plays an even more important role, in effect being the right of appeal—the only appeal that a councillor has—against what he may well feel is the unfair victimisation by a council with a heavy one-party majority, whatever the party, of someone who is a thorn in the flesh but is not necessarily doing anything improper. Again, it is important that the independent person, as far as it is ever possible, is upheld to be genuinely independent.

I join others in very much paying tribute to the Minister. I know from other sources how hard she has had to work at times to persuade more reluctant colleagues of the necessity to move in this direction. I congratulate her on her persuasive powers and the success that she has achieved. As my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, we do not have all that we want but we have a lot more than we thought we would get at an earlier stage in the Bill, and I am grateful for that.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I want to raise a specific issue, but first to declare an interest as a councillor and one-time member of a standards committee. I welcome the amendments because they move us towards a system that is proportionate, will protect the right to free speech, give confidence to the general public, be fair to an individual councillor and should prevent party-political prejudice leading to unjustifiable and unreasonable decisions. The introduction of the independent person—or at least one independent person—seems to me to be a major help in enabling us to abolish the Standards Board for England so that matters can be dealt with locally and we can remove the need for a national referral system.

My one remaining doubt is on how the decisions on allegations will be made. That relates to subsection (3). The Minister said that all local authorities would have to have a form of process for investigating and determining matters relating to breaches of the code of conduct but it is for them to decide what those processes should be. I hope that guidance will be given requiring a local authority to have a formal committee structure to achieve this. Otherwise, it is not clear how that will be delivered. If there is to be a formal committee structure, in my view it should be chaired by an independent person but not necessarily the same one who is the independent person referred to in other subsections. In addition to having an independent chair, there will be independent members, as now, along with sitting councillors. Then the whole council will be able to decide on any suspension from committees that might be recommended.

I believe that because it is extremely important to avoid any perception or possibility of party-political bias in reaching a decision. Standards committees with independent members seems to be a means of preventing what may appear to the general public to be party-political decisions being made. Therefore, pursuing independence at a local level through the independent person and independent members of standards committees is extremely important.