Grahame Morris
Main Page: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Grahame Morris Excerpts
Mr Pickles
There are obviously national policy statements—full stop. In addition, we are consulting on where these should bite in. We will be looking most carefully at those authorities that have not been able to meet these targets, but there is a big distinction—[Interruption.] We are not including housing or eco-towns. We are not suddenly going to impose big developments without local people having a say. That is the difference between Government and Opposition Members.
Cutting excessive red tape is the Bill’s second theme. The Bill will enable us to implement the reforms recommended by the Government’s Penfold review, which examined the multiple, overlapping development consents that were needed for many projects on top of planning permission. While much of the review is being implemented via secondary legislation, other parts require primary legislation. The Bill removes or streamlines duplicate regimes for highways, rights of way, and town and village green registration.
Let me stress, for the avoidance of doubt, that we are maintaining the strongest protection for England’s village greens. Indeed, the national planning policy framework has created a new planning protection for valuable green open spaces. However, we will need to prevent the registration system from being misused to hinder and slow legitimate, planned development. A review conducted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2009 slammed
“the existence of two parallel systems”
—village greens and planning—
“between which there is minimal communication”.
It added that, in the view of the Government of the day,
“this seems to be problematic”.
The problem lay with the last Government’s Commons Act 2006. Labour DEFRA Ministers told Parliament in 2009 that there would be a consultation to streamline the confusing regime and that the results would be published in 2010, but nothing happened. I wonder why. Perhaps the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), will take the opportunity this afternoon to apologise to the House for his tardiness.
We are also reforming special parliamentary procedure to remove a duplicate consent regime, introduced as a result of the poor drafting of the Bill that became the Planning Act 2008. As the Ways and Means Committee in this House and the Chairman of Committees in the other place have stated,
“since the 2008 Act did not amend the 1945 Act, we now have a statutory framework which is internally contradictory.”
The Bill removes that overlap, while retaining parliamentary safeguards for land with genuinely “special” historic and parliamentary protection, such as National Trust and common land.
The Bill also cuts red tape by allowing the renegotiation of economically unrealistic section 106 agreements. These measures go hand in hand with changes to secondary legislation on which we have consulted. In our sights particularly are affordable housing requirements that were negotiated at the height of Labour’s unsustainable housing boom. Now that the Brown bubble has burst, bringing us back to reality with a bump, we recognise that 75,000 homes, with planning permission, are lying unbuilt.
Mr Pickles
Not for a while.
Unviable section 106 agreements have led to no development, no negotiation, and no community benefits.
Mr Pickles
I will give way in a moment. I ask the hon. Gentleman to be patient, and allow me to develop my point.
More affordable housing will be delivered by the unlocking of those stalled sites than would be delivered without our reforms. The new powers will be used when negotiation is not already under way, and, as the House knows, it has the opportunity to send a clear message to all parties to get round the table and start negotiating now. We can all have pie-in-the-sky targets, but the hard truth is that the houses will not be built unless the sums add up. The reforms will complement our affordable housing programme, which will lever in £20 billion of housing investment over the spending review period.
I will now give way to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris).
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful to the Secretary of State. He is very kind. Does he accept the view of David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, who says that the abolition of the section 106 agreements is likely to cost us 35,000 affordable houses each and every year?
Mr Pickles
Only in the fantasy housing figures. The truth is that 41% of local authorities have already started these negotiations. That is one of the reasons why we have seen the number of houses start to increase. Eighty per cent. of authorities are willing to negotiate. Some lack the skills and experience to do so. We are willing to help there, but the truth is that, if we have a 50% target and nothing is built, 50% of nothing is nothing. The idea is to move things on. We have found in the negotiations that, rather than have a 30% target, many authorities have dropped to 26%. Many have managed a little higher than that, but they have shown flexibility to get the whole process moving.
Grahame M. Morris
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the two points he has raised are not material planning considerations?
John Howell
I accept that they may not be planning considerations, but they are certainly considerations in whether to move a development forward. The issue is that the planning permissions have been given but the houses have not been developed.
The problem lies not in the planning permissions that have been given, but in those that have not been given. The cost of producing rural planning applications is higher than the cost of those in other areas, and the Country Land and Business Association states that in many cases local planning authority staff clearly hope that the applicant, if faced with enough demands for expensive reports and surveys, will withdraw the application. In practice, that frequently does lead to withdrawal, especially in respect of minor developments: for instance, a proposal costing £5,000 to implement is unlikely to justify information costing £5,000 to produce. Indeed, prospective applicants often simply do not submit a proposal in the first place, which means that desirable rural economic development does not go ahead. This tends to bring the planning system into disrepute. It is therefore right for the planning system to be accused of holding up development.
The Bill is also accused of being centralising, rather than localist. This ignores the fact that the changes are meant to be part of a double devolution. The first was a devolution down to district and borough councils’ local planning authorities. The second was a devolution down to local people, so that they could put together their own neighbourhood plans. Devolution to local people is working better than devolution to councils. At the recent neighbourhood planning seminar in Thame in my constituency, which is one of the neighbourhood planning frontrunners, I was as surprised as anyone when a little old lady said, “Isn’t planning such fun?” I hope that that feeling is occurring all around the country, as people begin to get their hands dirty in doing the planning necessary to make these neighbourhood plans successful.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
First, may I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register?
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), and I agree with most of what he said. He rightly dissected the elements in this Bill that have nothing to do with growth and very little to do with infrastructure, and which are probably in part the product of ideas that were floated by a Mr Beecroft in a report that gained notoriety and should have been consigned to the dustbin. I advise the hon. Gentleman to think about who he sups with in coalition, because his views as expressed this evening are not very close to those that seem to be driving this Bill.
It is a curious Bill, and it has a grand title referring to “Growth and Infrastructure”, thereby implying that it will have a substantial impact on the economy and on development. If it were to stimulate the economy and ensure long-overdue new investment in infrastructure, we would be able to welcome it. Sadly, however, it follows the same line as its predecessor, the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill, which we dealt with in this House just a few weeks ago. When that Bill was announced in the summer, the Government claimed it would unlock some £40 billion in new infrastructure development and a further £10 billion in housing investment. One of the Lords Ministers stated in July that there was £40 billion-worth of shovel-ready schemes ready to go by the autumn. We are well and truly into the autumn now, yet so far the Government have not been able to identify a single new scheme to benefit from that legislation.
In the final stages of consideration of that earlier Bill a couple of weeks ago, we asked about the success criteria and how the legislation’s performance would be measured. That question clearly flummoxed the Minister responding to the debate, who simply told us we would have to wait and see. After that experience, it is hardly surprising that Opposition Members—as well as a significant number of Government Members—are very sceptical indeed about the claims being made for this Bill, which appears to be simply a collection of disparate items put together for political effect, but with very little empirical evidence as to their ability to achieve the real investment in infrastructure that is needed.
We have read a lot over the past few days about the need for more infrastructure investment. We have heard that from the Mayor of London: he specifically said that the Government are going slow on infrastructure investment. He has also called for a speeding up of the consideration of the need for more aviation runway capacity in the south-east. I agree with that. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) echoed that view in his contribution today, saying that our response to the need for investment in aviation infrastructure was inadequate and that addressing that need should be a priority. They and the rest of us will look in vain for anything in this Bill to help accelerate the glacial pace of the Davies commission on aviation capacity. That commission has clearly been set up by this Government for “long-grass purposes”—in order to kick the issue into touch until after the general election. The same Government have introduced this Bill, saying it is about speeding up infrastructure investment. There is a clear inherent conflict between the Government’s stated objective of stimulating infrastructure investment and what they are actually doing.
Clause 1 has received a lot of attention. It can be summarised as the “blame it all on planning” clause. Two and a half years ago the incoming Government said that the old system they inherited—the top-down, centralist system—was the problem and that they would tear it up and replace it with a new localist planning system. At the time a number of us advised them that introducing such radical change was not the best way to achieve improved confidence at a time when confidence was vital to stimulate the economy and that what they were doing risked having a catastrophic effect on planning consents. The current figures show the parlous situation in development. We have only to look at housing investment in recent years to see what a bad state we are in and how the changes that were made to the planning system a year ago have not improved things, but have, in many ways, made them worse.
Let us consider the housing supply figures. I was astonished to hear the Secretary of State say in his opening speech that the number of affordable homes being built was increasing, because the figures show exactly the opposite. The most recent National House-Building Council report states:
“The affordable housing sector continues to show a poorer performance than the private sector. Housing starts for the three months to the end of September 2012 from NHBC were 32.8% below the same period in 2011.”
When combined with the private sector, the reduction was 10.6% compared with last year. The combined housing starts are down by 10%, therefore, and the affordable housing starts are down by 32%, yet the Secretary of State claims things are getting better. They are not; they are getting very much worse, and this Government’s policies have been damaging.
It would be nice to hear the Government express a degree of remorse for their mistakes and a willingness to consider changes that would improve things, but I do not see very much evidence of that. Instead, it is being suggested that powers should be taken away from local authorities and given to the Planning Inspectorate in order to speed up both infrastructure and housing development.
When we probed the Secretary of State on the criteria that will be applied to defining which authorities may have their planning powers removed and their cases referred directly to the Planning Inspectorate, we were not given a very clear response. When the planning Minister, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), gave evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee, he highlighted two criteria: the number of times the Planning Inspectorate had overturned an authority’s decision on appeal, and the speed with which authorities deal with planning applications. So, like my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, who gave an excellent speech and a forensic demolition of the Bill, I looked at Planning magazine. It has produced a helpful table showing authorities that might fall into the category of being tardy in dealing with applications or having a disproportionate number of their cases overturned on appeal. Could I find Hackney listed—the one authority the Secretary of State identified? Yes, it was there, but only at the very bottom of one of the three lists—it was in only one of the three. It was the 21st—out of 25—lowest scoring English councils for determining all applications within 26 weeks. That is not exactly the kind of criterion that would lead one to assume that it deserves to be singled out for having powers stripped away from it. By contrast, Stratford-on-Avon, Torbay and Kensington and Chelsea all feature much higher up the lists, and all are in two out of three of the lists.
I am pleased that you are in the Chair, Mr Hoyle, rather than the Deputy Speaker who preceded you, because I see that the hapless Ribble Valley is the only authority in the country to appear in all three lists. It would therefore appear to be high in the pecking order of authorities likely to have their planning powers taken away from them, if the Minister’s criteria, as defined to the Select Committee, are applied in practice. I have to say that a lot of councillors in a lot of authorities all over the country will be extremely nervous as to how this power will be applied, given the lack of clarity and given what the evidence suggests about where weaknesses and failures have been.
Grahame M. Morris
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend will excuse my ignorance of geography and who has political control. Will he identify who has political control of the local authorities he cited?
Mr Raynsford
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I think he will be able to guess that Stratford-on-Avon, Kensington and Chelsea, Torbay and Ribble Valley all have Conservative-controlled authorities. I was not making a political point; I was simply observing the bizarre nature of the criteria that the Government appear to be operating in determining which authorities will have their planning powers stripped away from them and their cases referred to the Planning Inspectorate.
On the renegotiation of section 106 agreements, we again see a bizarre set of proposals that do not appear to have a sensible rationale and could have very perverse consequences. My experience—I do talk to a lot of people involved in the development of housing schemes—is that most local authorities are now being perfectly practical and pragmatic about renegotiating with developers where they believe that the affordable housing content in a section 106 agreement is genuinely a block to successful development. What local authorities are not doing is rolling over when developers come back insisting on having the entire affordable housing content stripped away. What is so crass about the Government’s action is that their clause will provide exactly the incentive to developers to say to local authorities, “We are going to get powers to overrule you, so we expect you now to roll over and not to require the affordable housing content in this scheme any longer.”
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and I want to make a few points about clauses 5, 21 and 23. I am pleased that the planning Minister is back in his place, because I would be interested to hear how clause 21, in particular, will apply in certain local circumstances.
Although Opposition and Government Members are in favour of measures that will encourage growth and infrastructure, we have a saying about selling something that is inherently unfit for purpose. It goes something like this: a fishmonger would never be heard shouting, “Rotten fish for sale”. I do not know whether other hon. Members have that saying—I do not know whether it comes from Grimsby, or Hull—but after my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) had comprehensively demolished the Government’s position in his opening speech, I felt that the Bill had a distinctly fishy smell. The more I have heard from Members on both sides of the House, including Government Members, the more my suspicions have been confirmed.
As the economy is showing signs that it is out of the longest double-dip recession since the 1950s, Government Members are perhaps being a little complacent. There is little comfort in that for those I represent in Easington who have lost their jobs. The claimant count in Easington has gone up by 800 since the coalition took power. There will also be little comfort for those who have seen their public services cut. Durham county council, my local authority, has undergone spending cuts of nearly £200 million, equivalent to 40% of its 2010 budget. There will be little comfort for those families struggling to cope with tax rises and benefit cuts while top-rate income tax earners receive a tax break. Indeed, the increase in jobseeker’s allowance claimants is just the tip of the iceberg. Figures provided to me by Durham county council that come from a study by Sheffield Hallam university show that worklessness in Easington is up 3,292 since last year—a worklessness rate of nearly 20% of the working-age population.
No constituency in the country requires more stimulus for growth and infrastructure than mine. Some potential projects are in the pipeline—such as Dalton Park and the centre of creative excellence, which is a transformative project for a brighter future in Easington—but for those projects to progress we need Ministers to recognise that sector-specific support is required, and I want to return to that if I have a chance a little later.
The problem that we have in the north-east is a lack of investment. The Government have succeeded in stripping away demand and jobs from the local economy, with job losses in my constituency at Dewhurst, Caterpillar and JJB Sports, as well as the closure of Cumbrian Seafoods in recent months. Those job losses are considerably higher than those at Ford in Southampton that have attracted such national publicity.
The Government are failing to invest in Britain, and they are failing to invest in the north-east in particular. Analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research North shows that almost half of major transport projects that involve public funds benefit only London and the south-east and account for 84% of planned spending, compared with 6% for the north and only 0.4% for the north-east. That is quite an incredible figure. The IPPR North analysis shows that transport spending in London is an astronomical £2,731 per head, compared with just £5 per head in the north-east, and people say that there is no such thing as a north-south divide.
What is the justification for such skewed infrastructure spending, which only reinforces and widens the north-south divide? The lack of spending is restricting growth in the north-east, and the Government’s policies of austerity have taken demand out of the local economy, so undermining jobs and growth, especially in my constituency.
In my view, the Government must go further and faster in delivering major infrastructure projects in the north-east and increase current funding. Obviously, building new and more affordable homes is part of that. Concerns have been expressed, which have been alluded to, by David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, about the consequences of the abolition of section 106, which could lose the country 35,000 affordable homes a year. Members have said that it is a good thing to renegotiate section 106 agreements. That may well be so, but it is possible to do that now. Indeed, many local authorities are involved in renegotiating section 106 agreements to meet local needs.
I do not believe that the planning system is failing. Figures have been referred to, but I remind Members that 87% of all planning applications are approved and the vast majority of applications—90%—are decided within 26 weeks. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) said, it seems that Conservative councils are the most underperforming in determining planning applications in a timely fashion. The Government must be free to look into the failings of any authority, but they should not misconstrue the exception as the rule. Indeed, if time limits are part of the criteria applied to judge performance, we should consider that, with major planning applications, 63% of the slowest 10% of councils are Conservative and that with all planning applications 50% of the slowest 10% of councils are Conservative. There is not really a case to suggest that Labour is dragging its feet in respect of timely considerations.
One of the affordable housing issues that I wanted to raise has already been covered, so I shall leave that. Although I feel that house building can boost the economy, it already employs more than 1 million people and accounts for 3% of our gross domestic product. Indeed, money spent on housing stays in the UK: 90% of the building materials used in the construction of houses are made in the UK. Few other sectors can support the UK economy to the same extent. It is estimated that each new home built creates one and a half full-time jobs directly and at least twice that number in the supply chain, so raising house building to the level of official projections could create 195,000 jobs directly and 400,000 in the supply chain.
One of the issues that I want to raise relates to the large-scale private sector developments that are ready to proceed in my constituency. I refer to a new retail development in Peterlee and the second phase of retail and mixed development in Dalton Park, near Murton. The reason for the delay is not that the local authority has held them up, but that spurious challenges have been made by a company called Praxis Holdings, despite the fact that the developments would be a major boost to the construction industry and could deliver 1,000 much-needed jobs in east Durham.
Sadly, I did not see any action or intervention from the Government to deter unscrupulous companies from delaying those developments. I am sorry that the Minister is not paying attention. I wonder whether clause 21 would make any difference. As one of his colleagues—a previous Local Government Minister—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) suggested, even if the Secretary of State were determining such applications, an objector would still have the right to use the judicial review process, which has held up one of the developments for more than a year.
A truly transformative project could revitalise east Durham: the centre of creative excellence. The scheme would involve a media park, including film, television, animation, music and digital media production, associated work space, leisure facilities, a multiplex cinema, a tourist hotel, educational facilities for digital media and executive and student housing. The planning permission has been extended because the project was delayed by the 2008 financial crisis, the loss of One North East, the abolition of Film UK and the loss of funding for the County Durham development company.
I hope that the Government will return confidence, demand and jobs to the east Durham economy, but we need a strong Government willing to seize the opportunity to provide sector-specific support for projects such as the Seaham centre of creative excellence, to realise private sector investment, jobs and training opportunities. Investment in my constituency, particularly in infrastructure, is necessary if we are to bring a new age of economic activity to former industrial areas. I hope that the Government will recognise that and, during the Bill’s subsequent stages, agree to appropriate amendments, including to clause 23 on employment rights, which is a retrograde measure.