Hilary Benn
Main Page: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement, although much of it has been leaked over the past few days.
Planning helps us to get the right development in the right place—development which we need, and that is why it is so important to get the balance right in this, the most fundamental change in planning policy in more than two generations. It is therefore extraordinary that the Government managed to make such a mess of the process, which did nothing to inspire confidence in all of us who want an effective planning system and the right kind of sustainable development, but who are determined to conserve the intrinsic character and beauty of England’s green and pleasant land—something that successive Governments have supported.
Councils were particularly concerned about the presumption in favour of “sustainable development”—ill defined—if they did not have up-to-date development plans, and, as we know, Ministers lashed out at those who had the temerity to express concern—such revolutionaries as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, I remind the House—calling them “semi-hysterical”, “left-wing” and “nihilist”.
Ministers claim that planning is the obstacle to building homes, when 300,000 dwellings that have already been given permission have not yet been built. Why is that? Because of the failure of the Government’s own economic policy. It is no wonder they have been arguing fiercely among themselves, with one unnamed Cabinet Minister—I just wonder who that might be—quoted as accusing the Chancellor of behaving like the Taliban on planning: a very revealing comment if a pretty inappropriate one.
There has also been a lack of transparency. Can the Minister before us confirm for the House whether any of the developers whom he and his colleagues have met since last June are donors to the Conservative party? We cannot find out for ourselves because the quarterly publication of Department for Communities and Local Government ministerial meetings is now nine months out of date—in clear contravention of the ministerial code. I have twice raised that issue with CLG Ministers in this Chamber, and on both occasions I have been promised that it was about to appear. It has not.
I welcome the U-turn on protection for playing fields and open spaces. Why on earth Ministers thought they could get away with removing it in the first place, I fail to understand. I welcome also the reference to the five principles of sustainable development, which we had called for.
On brownfield land, why are the Government so against a national, as opposed to a local “brownfield first” policy, given that it is the best place to build the millions of homes that we urgently need, and the best way to protect the greenfield sites that so many Members are concerned about?
Can the Minister explain exactly what the new requirements for statutory consultees such as the Environment Agency and English Heritage will involve? How will they be, in the rather menacing words of the Budget Red Book, “held to account” for delivering sustainable development?
Will the Minister clarify the reported remarks by Professor Andrew McNaughton, the chief engineer of High Speed 2, about 100,000 new homes being built between Coventry and Wolverhampton, and about a “new docklands” to the west of London? Given the Government’s professed commitment to localism, will he tell us when the local authorities covering these areas first knew about this, and what will be the Government’s role in the development of new towns and cities to help us to build the homes that we need?
On town centres, will the Minister confirm that he has accepted our proposal that offices should remain in the sequential town centre test, given their importance to the economies of our towns and cities, including through the business generated by those who work in them,? What changes is he planning to make to use class orders? Will local authorities be given greater flexibility in determining those?
On the crucial question of transition to the new arrangements—the point that Members raised more than any other in the debate that we had back in October—we know that about half of councils currently do not have development plans. While the Minister has talked about providing 12 months to produce up-to-date plans, annex 1 of the framework is rather less clear. Will he produce further guidance on how the transition is going to work in practice? Where councils do have plans, who will determine whether they are “silent”, “out of date”, or “indeterminate”? Those words remain in the final framework, so presumably the presumption in favour of sustainable development will apply—the opposite of localism. Who decides what is “in the public interest”—the phrase that the Minister has been using in his interviews today? In particular, who will decide when an application goes to appeal?
Not only has Parliament not been given the chance to vote on the final version of the framework, but it is coming into force from today—before Members in the House have even had a chance to read it.
The country needs a planning system that will help to produce the much-needed homes, businesses, jobs and transport connections of the future, but will also protect the green spaces and special places we value. However, this revised NPPF may end up doing neither. Far from giving us certainty, there is likely to be delay as developments are held up by appeals and by the courts having to rule on a new and untested approach. In other words, there is uncertainty and chaos—the worst of all worlds—instead of the best of planning.
Greg Clark
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s response. His family may have forsworn their aristocratic origins, but he does the best impression of Lady Bracknell’s righteous indignation that we have seen in the House for some time.
It is a shame that the right hon. Gentleman has not approached this in the constructive spirit in which his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), to whom I pay tribute, embarked on this process in July. She said right at the beginning that it was important that we should work together and have a constructive response to what is a shared problem to make sure that future generations continue to benefit from homes, jobs and the protections that are in place. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) maintained that approach, but it does not seem to have transmitted itself along the Opposition Front Bench. I am disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman has taken a partisan approach today.
Let me answer the right hon. Gentleman’s questions. It is important that we bring brownfield land back into use. The essence of localism is that every place is different, so it is clearly not the right approach to have a single national target that needs to be as appropriate for a country shire district as it is for an inner-city district. As he will see, the plan-making section of the framework clearly allows local councils to set a locally appropriate target for bringing brownfield land back into use. That has to make sense.
On the statutory consultees, one of the innovations of the Localism Act 2011 is that it creates a truly statutory obligation on the part of consultees, including those that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, to co-operate with local authorities to make sure that they do not renege on their responsibilities. The Act imposes a legal duty to assist local councils in putting together their local plans.
On the High Speed 2 proposal, I was as bemused as the right hon. Gentleman when I read about it in the weekend papers. He will know, having read the framework this morning, that the protection for the green belt is clear and unequivocal, as we have always said. That is one particular case, and I do not see its relevance.
The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that we are insistent that our town centres should receive support to help them to revive. As Mary Portas, the retail consultant, pointed out, town centres lose out to out-of-town centres because they cannot provide the necessary car parking spaces, which were suppressed by the previous guidance. One change that we are making is to allow local councils to set the parking standards, to reflect what is required locally. Offices will remain part of the “town centre first” policy, but with an exception for rural offices, because the creation of jobs in rural areas is important for the sustainability of villages.
The transitional arrangements begin today. They have been agreed with the Local Government Association. As of now, there is a team in the Planning Inspectorate comprising representatives of the Local Government Association, the Planning Inspectorate and my Department to assist any authority that wants help in revising its plan or advice on any aspect of it. The team will be there for as long as is necessary.
The essence of our reforms is localism—to put power in the hands of people. This is the end of the central targets and top-down direction that put people off the planning system. If we want more homes to be built, we have to work with the grain of local communities, rather than against it. That is what we are doing. We are putting power in the hands of local people. I understand that that makes an old centralist like the right hon. Gentleman unhappy, but that is the direction in which we are going and these reforms are a significant step in that direction.