Localism Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

I should declare an interest as joint president of London Councils, vice-president and past president of the Town and Country Planning Association, and, as I remain a member of what my noble friend Lord Tope calls the local government party, as an ex-member and chair of the London Assembly and a past member of a London borough council.

I find myself torn over the Bill. The Government acknowledge and seek to address ingrained centralism. I acknowledge that I have talked tediously over the years about seeing power not as granted from the centre but as coming up from citizens. I say citizens, because citizenship is an important concept and community, which is also important, begs almost as many questions as it answers. Community empowerment, as others have said, reflects a rather top-down attitude.

I am sad to say that I read the Bill as rather anti-democratic. Representative democracy, to which other noble Lords have referred, is about the vesting of trust in representatives at a local level: representatives who are in a position to raise their sights, to make connections between issues and assess priorities. That is to be bolstered. I would like the Government to exercise a self-denying ordinance and get away from the mindset that they need to protect people against their local authority.

The Secretary of State at CLG could play a big advocacy role within Whitehall on behalf of local government—I suggest education and taxation for starters. I share the view that the provision for referenda on council tax increases above a centrally set ceiling is capping under another name.

There is also an obligation on local authorities to rise to the challenge. I hope that the power of general competence will not be so constrained that local authorities and members will be tentative about its use. We are told that the Secretary of State does not intend to use the wide-ranging powers to limit the power of general competence and that he will use it lightly, but being told that may not be enough. I am with the noble Lord, Lord True, here.

The Bill does not go back to first principles. In grafting this power on to existing provisions, is the Minister satisfied that there has been a thorough trial of pre-existing legislation which will constrain local authorities?

One of my first principles is that power is best shared. I have always had a problem with the model of the elected mayor and I have an even greater problem with the concept of shadow mayors. I am very puzzled about how that can be described as anything but: “We at the centre know best; we know you have mechanisms now for a directly elected mayor, if you wish, but let us show you the error of your ways”. I think the Minister will have got that message from the House this evening.

A lot is going on in the local scene. Over the past few days, we have had long debates in this Chamber on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. Reference has been made during those proceedings to this Bill and, among other things, to possible confusion between mayors—the post-holders—and police and crime commissioners. If we have coincidental elections, we shall make the problem even worse.

I am also concerned about the costs to local authorities inherent in this Bill. I am not concerned about the costs of democracy, but do we need legislation for the referendum on the council tax and the other referendums? The need to manage local expectations worries me considerably. On the community right to challenge, anyone who has been in the private sector knows the costs for everyone when there is a beauty parade of who can pitch the most persuasively. On the provisions about community assets, is it just the lawyer in me that stumbles over restrictions on the disposal of one’s own property? Will there be an unintended consequence that property will not be developed in the widest sense for the good of the community because of a fear by the owner of losing out in the longer term?

The neighbourhood fora are self-selecting, unaccountable, without proprietary rules, and so on. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, alluded to that. The local authority will have a lot of shepherding and support in this area for neighbourhood development orders which will, in effect, give planning consent. They seem to me to contain the seeds of real difficulties beyond resources.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby referred to the advantaged position of those with social capital and, if I were a resident of a village which wanted to keep it just as it was, I would recruit like-minded neighbours and make sure that we had no additional housing in the neighbourhood and I would shift the issue on to other villages that were not so quick off the starting block. I think that was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. If a local authority does not have up-to-date, adequate housing assessments, how will an examiner, who looks at a local plan, consider it in terms of housing numbers?

I would like to put in a word for the strategic, following the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. Should planning not be a strategic activity? The regional tier has gone, essentially, I think, because of the politics. What failed? Was it the concept or the practice? We need meaningful, effective strategic planning. The duty to co-operate does not deal with, for instance, the spatial boundaries of a catchment area. It seems to me to be quite circular. If everyone has to co-operate with everyone else, but there are no shared objectives and no shared priorities, how do you start or how do you get off the merry-go-round? Like my noble friend Lady Parminter and others, I am very unclear about how local finance becoming a material consideration will work. I am struggling to understand whether this runs counter to Clause 106, which deals with the impact and the consequences of a decision—not the catalyst for it.

The NPPF has been mentioned and the concerns are recognising the links between the built environment, health, well-being, climate change, adaptation and so on. Echoing the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, the notion of sustainable communities is really important and it is important that we see the framework very soon so that we can be reassured that it is not in danger of going down the plughole mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford.

There is a purpose to planning and it needs to be stated. I do not see that sustainable development and planning for prosperity need to be in conflict because I do not think sustainable development is necessarily anti-growth.

It has not been possible to touch on all parts of the Bill. I congratulate the Minister and other noble Lords who covered so much ground with so much expertise and wisdom. Finally, I will pick up the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, about standards. My noble friend muttered to me, rightly, that we must not overreact to problems with the Standards Board and let those distract us from the issue. There is a lot to address in Committee, and our duty will be to ensure that the legislative basis is there for the cultural shift to which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, referred, not just job creation for the regulation drafters.

I said I was torn over the Bill; maybe the grand old man, Mr Gladstone—not particularly a loyalist, I think —was right when he talked about,

“trust of the people, tempered by prudence”.