Infrastructure Planning Commission

Greg Clark Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gale. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) on securing the debate. She spoke with her characteristic passion in representing her constituents. They are fortunate to be represented by one of the most tenacious campaigners in the House. There is no cause that my hon. Friend takes up that she does not take up with verve, passion and the greatest tenacity. In recent months, she has worked hard to raise the profile of this issue in the House. She has organised rallies in Mid Bedfordshire; she has written to me; we have spoken in person; and she has raised her concerns at Prime Minister’s questions—she has taken the matter right to the top. Everyone should reflect on the vigour with which she pursues these matters.

I was pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) in the Chamber. That shows that the process that the IPC was set up to operate under is a matter of cross-party concern. I hope that the Government will have the support of the whole House when it comes to abolishing the IPC in the Localism Bill, which is currently in Committee, but which will return to the Floor of the House on Report and Third Reading in a few weeks’ time. It is useful to know that the issue goes beyond my hon. Friend’s constituency.

I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend. For the reasons she set out, she will appreciate that it is not possible for me to comment on the merits of the incinerator. If the national policy statements are not designated before the decision is made, it would fall to the Secretary of State—that is shorthand for the ministerial team at the Department for Communities and Local Government—to determine the application. Given that today’s proceedings have a bearing on that process, it is important that I do not prejudice my view of the application. However, I have heard what my hon. Friend has said, and I will comment on each of her points. Let me take in turn the three general points that she made.

My hon. Friend argued that the decision on where a piece of infrastructure of national significance should be located should not be determined by an unelected body in defiance of local people’s wishes; I entirely agree. Projects such as major roads, reservoirs and power plants are essential to our health and well-being and to the nation’s economic future. They have a major influence on society’s impact on the environment, helping us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and cut our carbon footprint. They form the legacy that we leave the next generation. It is right to have a regime to consider those major applications, which recognises their larger-than-local aspect.

It is worth observing that all the existing municipal incinerators in England contribute less in annual emissions than bonfire night—a single night. It is worth putting the matter in perspective. However, I believe that when the relevant decisions are made there should be—as there are not with the decisions of the IPC—elected Members who are accountable. Unfortunately, we have inherited from the previous Government a system in which, ludicrously, the final decisions about when and where major developments should take place are made by the IPC, an unelected quango that is unaccountable to the public. I mean no disrespect to the people who work there, who have been given a remit in legislation. They discharge that remit, I am sure, to the best of their ability, but they have been caught in a situation that is fundamentally undemocratic. That is an astonishing deficit of democracy, and the arrangement must go.

[Nadine Dorries]

The point about bonfire night has been raised several times, almost as a smokescreen—if hon. Members will excuse the pun. The emissions from an incinerator are constant and daily—they continue day and night. The incinerator will burn for 24 hours a day. Bonfire night is one night of the year. We took evidence from Professor Paul Connett from America, the world’s leading authority on energy from waste. The emissions from the incineration are constant. Companies such as Covanta frequently breach their licences—the company is in court in the States at the moment. They frequently release toxic emissions into the air. I grant the Minister that if they kept to their licences and operated as they are supposed to, there might be merit in the bonfire night argument, but history shows that such incinerators do not operate as they are supposed to, because they break the law almost daily and release into the atmosphere emissions that they should not. The comparison with bonfire night cannot be made.

[Greg Clark]

It is important that any facility that is or will be licensed, wherever it is, should stick to any terms and conditions of the licence. I am sure that Department of Energy and Climate Change Ministers, who are in charge, along with our colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, of supervising those issues, will reflect on what my hon. Friend has said and try to ensure that there is the greatest possible confidence in the adherence to those conditions.

We are determined to introduce reforms in the Localism Bill. I look forward, as I am sure my hon. Friend does, to the day when it is passed. However, provided that the national policy statements on energy are designated as we expect, we anticipate that the application in question will be decided by the IPC alone, without the possibility of ministerial intervention. That is the system that we have been bequeathed. An observer might ask, as my hon. Friend does, why, if Ministers believe that there should be democratic accountability, they do not scrap the IPC and the regime under which the planning application was submitted. However strong the temptation may be, Ministers must obey the law.

The law is at odds with Government policy, but we live in a parliamentary democracy and cannot rule by decree. There have been recent examples relevant to that. I think my hon. Friend is familiar with the case of CALA Homes, concerning the revocation of the regional spatial strategies, in which the courts determined that however clear the Government’s intention to abolish those strategies, we need to go through the parliamentary process to abolish them, rather than anticipate that abolition. The courts were clear on that. The fact that we took the decision that resulted in the court case shows the Government’s desire to do as much as possible to implement our policy as quickly as possible, which is important. However, for good reasons we are required to go through the House to pass legislation. When it comes to abolishing not only the IPC but the current procedures for considering major infrastructure applications, that is what we must do. We are constrained in that way.

My hon. Friend raised concerns that the process of pre-consultation has been defective. I have listened to her carefully and will immediately take up with the IPC all the points that she made. It is crucial that consultation should be fair and open, so that people can give their views even in a system that we both agree is flawed. It should facilitate the meaningful involvement of all those who want to be involved in the process. It is important that local people should be able to be heard in person and demand an open hearing. The onus is also on any organisation that carries out a consultation to ensure that its electronic procedures are widely accessible and compatible with the systems that users are likely to have. Organisations should not have an inaccessible system, which they should design with users in mind. I shall immediately get in touch with the IPC on the points that my hon. Friend raised.

The Planning Act 2008 specifies, as my hon. Friend knows, a narrow range of conditions in which Ministers can take decisions out of the IPC’s hands, which is our difficulty. Those conditions include questions of national security and defence. Even if we wanted to stop the process, I do not believe the law would allow us to do so.

My hon. Friend raised an important point about the role of national policy statements and the likely timing of their designation. She knows, having served on the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, the reasons why it is crucial, when we face a prospective crisis in generating capacity, to get investment in that capacity. The nuclear programme is important to that. We have always said that we want to bring national planning policy statements to the House as quickly as possible.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has not yet responded to the Select Committee, and it is for him to respond to its concerns about process, but it is the Government’s view that we should get on as soon as possible and allow Parliament the chance to ratify those statements in the interest of energy security and, indeed, investment in that important area of national life. However, there is clearly a possibility that the statements might not be designated, and then the decision in question would come to the Secretary of State. I do not want to raise my hon. Friend’s hopes and create an expectation that that will happen, because the opposite is to be expected. My right hon. Friend will respond to the Committee in due course.

We are in an unfortunate position. I commend my hon. Friend for the vigour with which she is pursuing the matter. She is right to make sure that her constituents’ voices are heard. Of course, even under the existing flawed system, the IPC has a duty to consider local people’s voices, and I shall, as I have said, pass on to it her comments about the process to date. It is worth pointing out that the IPC has not yet made a decision. I hope that the debate is an opportunity to explain to my hon. Friend’s constituents what I think she knows, being expert in the matter, about the constraints, and the requirements on the IPC for consultation and to share our frustration—we would rather not be in this world. I hope that the next time we discuss the issues, it will be after the passage of the Localism Bill, and that the IPC will be dead and buried and replaced by a system that my hon. Friend and I—and, I think, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington—want. That is a system in which major decisions of national importance are taken through a fast-track, streamlined procedure, with a Minister ultimately responsible to the House and, through the Government, to the nation, in charge of making the decisions.