Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Pickles
Mr Pickles
Provided a neighbourhood plan has been submitted, then it has considerable weight, as has been confirmed by a recent court case.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
T3. May I refer the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), to her answers to my hon. Friends the Members for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) and, on the Opposition Front Bench, for West Ham (Lyn Brown)? What actions is the fire Minister taking specifically to amend the statutory instrument along the lines suggested by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which has scrutinised the text, to ensure that the promises she gave at the Dispatch Box to safeguard firefighters pensions can be delivered, particularly if fire authorities tell us that they cannot or will not deliver them?
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Pickles
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.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Pickles
Mr Pickles
This obligation is likely to be placed on us because of our control of the European development funds. We are currently under an obligation to fly the EU flag for one week a year. It seems to me that the flying of a flag should be a joyous act, rather than one imposed by another authority. The idea that we should be fined for not flying the EU flag is utterly ridiculous and a sign of a lack of confidence on the part of our EU partners.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
T8. In the national press today, there are at least three reports of dramatic increases in bed-blocking. Bed-blocking occurs when patients cannot be discharged from hospital because social care packages have not been put in place by hard-pressed local authorities. This is now costing the taxpayer about £600,000 every day. Is not this more evidence of this Government’s failed policies on social care in local government? They are cutting too far and too fast.
Mr Pickles
We have put in an extra £7.2 million, but the hon. Gentleman makes a reasoned point. I feel that the reforms in the national health service and giving local authorities more responsibility for health should enable us to get a much better and much more closely co-ordinated and integrated process. The movement from hospital into care or into a person’s home needs to be better organised. The Government will certainly produce a White Paper soon to deal with this. I hope that it will meet some of the problems that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.