Rural Councils: Funding

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hoare]

Will my hon. Friend forgive me for not giving way? I am really short of time and want to try to cover as much territory as I can.

Let me turn to some of the principal points. With regard to formula reform, if my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset looks at my last question from the Back Benches to our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and at my contribution to the debate on the King’s Speech, he will recall that I made precisely that point. It is a point that he, I, most people present and others have made throughout our time here: the formula needs reform. My hunch is that we could have done it, and probably would have done it, immediately after the 2019 general election, but along came our old friend covid. As desirable as a fundamental review of the formula would be, I do not believe that trying to ask councillors and their officers, who rose magnificently to the challenge of meeting local demand during the crisis of covid, to turn bandwidth, support and attention towards thinking about solutions to formula questions would have been the right thing to do.

We need to reform the formula, as is recognised, but I suggest to my hon. Friend that now is not the right time. In this settlement, we will have to play the hand of cards we are dealt under the rubric of the formula as it currently exists. I fundamentally agree with the Opposition spokesman and others that this should never be a job of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are acute and identified needs for service delivery due to geography and sparsity in our rural areas, but there are also acute needs in our urban areas. Deprivation is deprivation; it merely manifests itself in different quantums and different varieties in urban and rural settings.

The Opposition spokesman is absolutely right to say that we do not want some sort of bidding war or competition. Where our people are in need and have a legitimate aspiration for the delivery of quality and reliable services, they should be delivered in a cost-effective way, irrespective of where one lives. If deprivation, poverty and need are blind, so must be those who provide services and the formulas that generate the cash to be able to do so.

We know that rural services are key. We also know, as a matter of indisputable fact, that by definition their delivery costs are higher, partly, although not exclusively, due to both sparsity and geography. [Interruption.] Mr Gray, I have been directing my remarks to Mrs Latham, having not realised that the Chair had changed. My apologies, Sir, if you have taken the Chair and I have transitioned you into something that you did not wish to be.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

It’s a modern world.

[Simon Hoare]

I take the point about the challenges of an ageing population, home-to-school transport and SEND. All have high demands and all have an irrepressible trajectory, which is why it is so important that His Majesty’s Government do not view these things in silos or, indeed, in isolation. It requires collaboration and close working between my Department, the Department for Education, sometimes the Home Office when it comes to police and fire services, and, arguably most importantly, the Department of Health and Social Care as it relates to the delivery of social care for some of the most needy and vulnerable in our communities. I am lucky that the Department and I have an excellent relationship with those Departments. Conversations are ongoing, and we will work as closely as we can—not out of turf warfare or some sort of testosterone-driven competition whereby people say, “My Department is better than yours,” but focused solely and singularly on how best to use taxpayers’ money to help councils to deliver the services they require.

As Members have mentioned, councils have done the most fantastic work in meeting funding challenges. They have shared back-of-house functions and delivered shared services, and combined authorities have come together to create unitaries, as we did in Dorset. As a result of going unitary—it has not been without problems; let us not be false about that—there have been massive savings and no cuts to any of the services that are delivered to our people by Dorset Council. We have to salute the ingenuity of councillors and their officers, who work tirelessly to meet contemporary needs in challenging times.

I have to say to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) that I am sure his constituents will be fantastically interested in what he said: I was perplexed to hear that councils should be precluded from the delivery of housing in their areas. Many councils ask us to allow them to build social rented properties, affordable housing and the like. I noted his comments with interest, and I am sure his constituents will note them with alarm.

As I say, we should not take the concerns in our rural areas personally, because I hear exactly the same calls for additional funding, changes to the formula, other reviews—

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I fear that we have come to the end, so I must cut the Minister off mid-flow.

[Simon Hoare]

Forgive me; I thought we had until 11.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

It is now 11 o’clock.

[Simon Hoare]

Oh yes, so it is.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Also, it doesn’t do to argue with the Chair, Minister.

[Simon Hoare]

I wasn’t, Mr Gray.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Quite right too.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The fact is that we have run a national register and it has identified more than 28,000 hectares of developable land, which is enough for 1 million homes. I make no apology for wanting regeneration, and I make no apology for wanting brownfield before green belt.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

At this moment there are 20 million tonnes of wheat locked up in Ukraine and we are facing a significant food shortage across the world in the years to come. Does the Minister agree that, at a time like this, using good productive land in the UK for solar farms is disgraceful and that the forthcoming national planning policy framework ought to discourage the use of agricultural land for solar farms rather than encourage it?

[Stuart Andrew]

I know that my hon. Friend has recently secured a Westminster Hall debate on this issue. Where agricultural land is needed, we always suggest it should be the less good agricultural land, but we also need to ensure that we are producing our own energy for this country. That is a balance that needs to be struck locally.

Solar Farms and Battery Storage

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered planning for solar farms and battery storage solutions.

May I say what a great pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley? This is the first time it has happened to me, and it may well be a less pleasant experience than I am anticipating, but let us hope it all goes according to plan.

Let me divert any suggestion that may arise during the debate that I am somehow anti-solar, anti-renewable or anti-environmentalist. On the contrary, I suspect that everyone in the Chamber is a passionate environmentalist. I went to the first COP, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, as a special adviser, and I have been on the Environmental Audit Committee ever since. I am passionate about the north and south poles, which I have visited often, and where we can see the effect of climate change, and in every way I would consider myself to be an environmentalist. I would not want my credentials to be lessened by my remarks this afternoon, and I am sure other right hon. and hon. Members around the room feel the same.

I am proud of the fact that we have a proud environmental record in Wiltshire. We declared a climate change emergency in February 2019, and we plan to make the county carbon-neutral by 2030. Renewables play an extremely important part in that, and I am proud of the contribution that we have already made with regards to solar. For example, at the former RAF Lyneham in my constituency, we have a 250 acre solar farm with 269,000 solar panels, providing 69.8 MW —enough energy to power 10,000 homes as well as the base itself. That is not a bad way to do it, but the point is that it is entirely invisible. It is on the base, it is on former Army land, it is within the wire and it is entirely invisible to anybody nearby. Equally, RAF Wroughton, which is nearby, has 150,000 solar panels on 170 acres. A number of similar ex-military sites are invisible to the passer-by and are making a huge contribution to renewable energy. By contrast, at Minety in my constituency, planners recently agreed to a solar farm with 166,000 panels on 271 acres of agricultural land despite massive local opposition, which seems to go against what is said in the national planning policy framework. I will come back to that in a second.

What seems to be happening in Wiltshire, Dorset and one or two counties in the west country is that the grid is full in Devon and Cornwall. It is no longer possible to get a link from a solar farm to the grid in Devon and Cornwall, and developers have moved north. I am told that the connections to the grid in Wiltshire are nearly full, but that gives me little satisfaction, because the technology is moving so fast that the situation may well change in time. Secondly, even if Wiltshire became exempt, as it were, from further solar farms, all we would then do is move the blister further north or east, and many Members present would find that their constituents were being targeted just as much as mine are.

Right now, we have a gigantic number of applications in my constituency for solar farms—I know of at least four. Many of them would feature battery storage units, which are horrible, industrialised containers that often take up an entire field. There are some safety risks attached to them, as they burst into flames from time to time, so they are quite dangerous. They are turning a rural area into an industrialised centre, which is really unacceptable.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has mentioned the NPPF, which I understand is meant to be updated in July this year. Does he agree that there should be rigorous rules around planning permission for solar panels and that we should use commercial units for them first, instead of using agricultural land?

[James Gray]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, which I will come back to in one second. The NPPF is central to this, and when the Government come out with their update to it, it must include strict rules on solar farms.

We in Wiltshire are being targeted. I have huge sites at Derry Hill and at Leigh Delamere, and many sites have huge battery storage facilities attached to them. Something like 25 battery sites are currently being considered by Wiltshire Council. There is a proposal for a huge battery farm at Lea near Malmesbury. It is perfect, first-class agricultural land. I went to a public meeting in Lea the other day on the subject, and 250 people turned up in that tiny village—that must be more than the entire population of the village. That shows the strength of local feeling, but none the less the battery farm may go ahead—we will have to see.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I testify to my hon. Friend’s environmental credentials. He wrote the excellent book “Poles Apart”, which I have read, about the Arctic circle—in fact, I visited the North Pole with him some years ago. I completely agree that we need solar farms and sustainable energy and that we need to diversify our energy sources, but I also agree that we need to ensure that planning does not override the current use of agricultural land, nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest, which often happens with solar farms. I therefore agree that any review of the planning guidance needs to ensure that those other factors are fully taken into account, rather than being overridden by solar farms on their own.

[James Gray]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful to him for the plug. The book is only £10 and it is available in decent bookshops near you, or I could perhaps arrange for it to be sent directly. He is absolutely right: we must not allow the planning system to override good environmental and nature principles because of some need to have renewables.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

This is not just happening in the west country; we are getting it in Hertfordshire. We have a number of applications for quite substantial areas of productive farmland. We are talking about 150 or 200 acres, and quite a few of these pieces of land are all in one area, which is causing a lot of concern. It is probably right, when we look at revising the planning framework, that we look at the balance between productive agricultural land and sustainable energy, because both are important. I will just mention Protect the Pelhams and the Bygrave Action Group, which asked me to make that point.

[James Gray]

The action group will be reassured that my right hon. and learned Friend takes a keen interest in the matter.

Before I come back to the national planning policy framework, which must be central to this afternoon’s debate, I will touch briefly on battery storage solutions, which are springing up all over the place. They are absolutely hideous. There is a fire risk attached to them, and they do not make a single contribution towards renewables. All they do is store electricity that has been produced at a cheap time, when there is low demand overnight, instead of at an expensive time, such as during the day. In other words, they increase the electricity producer’s profits but do not reduce the amount of electricity used, even slightly. They do not increase the amount of renewable energy produced; they are merely a convenience for the developers. They are a hideous new development. Technology will soon overtake them, and we will be left with hundreds of acres of countryside with these vast industrial sites on them. They will then be redundant and the planners will turn around and say, “They are brownfield sites. Let’s put houses or factories on them”—on what was, until recently, farmland.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is raising an important issue. In my constituency, one farmer diversified by putting in a solar farm—one that is acceptable because, as the hon. Gentleman said, it is not obtrusive and it is not seen. After substantial consultation, the local community agreed with it as well. As we look ahead to the need for green energy, and as we look to the war in Ukraine, it is clear that the demands on highly productive land will be greater than ever. Does there come a time when solar farms and battery installations have to take a backseat to food production?

[James Gray]

The hon. Member makes a good point. Of course, food security will be central to our considerations as we go forward. He made an interesting point: he said the solar farm in his constituency was built with the enthusiasm of local people. That is, of course, how it should be. There will be places where local people say, “I am committed to environmentalism and renewables. I want to see a renewable farm near my village or in my town. I want to see it behind a high hedge,” and they will lay down certain conditions under which it can be put in. That is great. By contrast, when local people—such as the people of Lea, in the public meeting I mentioned a moment ago—are absolutely unanimous in their determination not to have one, they must be listened to. That becomes an important part of the consideration.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward this important debate. Is there not a danger that we swap the drive towards energy security for food security? Should we not set a balancing target for food security in this country from the current 60% to, say, 75%, where it used to be? That would prevent planning consent being given for sites such as the one near Old Malton, in my constituency, which is 70% best and most versatile land. Does he agree that giving consent for such land is absolutely inappropriate, and that councils should take food security into account in their decisions?

[James Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the great considerations that we are currently battling with is the question of food security. Post-Ukraine, or during Ukraine, we are facing a real crisis in food production in this country. Why we are taking perfectly usable agricultural land and covering it with vanity mirrors and industrial battery storage units, I simply cannot imagine. It is extraordinary.

Just yesterday, we had a debate in this Chamber on a similar subject—the question of housing in planning—and, to some extent, we are discussing the same thing. Developers should, of course, be encouraged to reuse brownfield sites in town centres, but, given the choice between a brownfield site in a town centre or a greenfield site in the countryside, they are going to go for the greenfield site. We therefore have to change the planning system to focus house building on previously used land. A little off the subject, Mr Paisley—thank you for not picking me up on that.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fascinating speech. Does he feel that there is a need to prioritise brownfield land and particularly to look at brownfield in urban areas, as well as in rural areas?

[James Gray]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. We have car parks that are good places to put overhead solar farms, as they do in many other parts of the world. Every factory that is built should have solar panels on the roof. Massive areas in town centres should have solar panels attached. However, those solutions cost developers quite a lot more money, and they are not going to do that if they can just buy a nice greenfield site and stick the solar farm out there. It is much easier for them to do that. That is why the planning system has to constrain what they do, so that they are forced to come back into our town centres and use the kind of solutions he describes.

We ought to move on to the central question, which is about planning. Wiltshire Council is being particularly targeted at the moment because it is being a little too cautious. The council is very concerned that, if it turns applications down, unless it can demonstrate that the application absolutely did not fall within the current planning guidance, the inspector will overturn that decision at appeal, and the council will then be faced with substantial barristers’ costs.

Wiltshire Council is saying, perfectly reasonably, “We need to be guaranteed that we are within planning law when turning down these applications.” That is why the detailed definition of planning law and the NPPF is incredibly important in order to give some comfort to councils such as Wiltshire Council when they say, “This is going to be turned down. Here’s why.” The wording of the NPPF should therefore be clear. I have been saying to my council that, at the moment, it is clear. Paragraph 155a of the NPPF says that local plans should provide a

“strategy for energy…while ensuring that adverse impacts are addressed…including cumulative landscape and visual impacts.”

The guidance says:

“It is for each local authority to determine a planning application to include the consideration of intrinsic character and beauty of the countryside, as well as whether the best quality land is being used for agricultural purposes. Large-scale solar farms can have a negative impact on the rural environment, particularly in undulating landscapes.”

There is not one inch of Wiltshire that is not undulating, so, if that were to be applied in detail, there would be no solar farms in the county of Wiltshire.

As has been said, guidance also states very clearly that solar farms should be focused on

“previously developed and non agricultural land…that is not of high environmental value”.

The guidance actually says that at the moment, leaving aside the upcoming review.

On 9 March, in this Chamber, the Science Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), confirmed that interpretation of the NPPF. He said:

“In 2021, the Government set up a national infrastructure planning reform programme,”

which will be reviewed

“later this year”.

We would be interested to hear when that happens; we want to know the outcome. He continued:

“As part of that, the Government are reviewing the national policy statements for energy.”

Importantly, speaking as a Minister from the Dispatch Box, he said:

“It seems to me that”

we need

“a clearer national policy statement…The draft revised national policy statement for renewables includes a new section on solar projects, providing clear and specific guidance to decision makers on the impact on, for example, local amenities, biodiversity, landscape, wildlife and land use…It requires developers to justify using any such land and to design their projects to avoid, mitigate and, where necessary, compensate for impacts”—[Official Report, 9 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 127-8WH.]

on agricultural land.

[Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. The comments that we heard earlier from colleagues about the use of agricultural land is a particular concern in my constituency as we have a proposed large solar farm that is nationally significant infrastructure because of its size. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is it important for local communities to be at the heart of that decision-making and be consulted properly, so that they can ensure that these solar farms—which we are not opposed to in principle, but they must be in the right places—do not take away from things that we want to preserve?

[James Gray]

My hon. Friend is right and I am grateful for his intervention. It must be done with local consent and enthusiasm. The notion that solar farms can be good for biodiversity is, of course, complete nonsense. No shepherd worth his salt would graze his sheep on a solar farm. The grass is low quality. I do not think there is one single solar farm in the west of England currently being grazed, and the notion that they could be is nonsensical. Equally, the notion that, somehow, wildflowers thrive on solar farms is simple nonsense; it is simply not true. There is not a single wildflower that I have ever seen on any of the solar farms that I have ever visited. Therefore, the notion, which the developers put forward, that solar farms are somehow biodiversity-friendly is absolute nonsense.

The heart of the problem is that Wiltshire Council, and probably many other councils too, interprets the nation policy framework very conservatively. For example, the NPPF seems to indicate that it thinks that grade 3a land should not have a solar farm on it, but that grade 3b land could do. It is not absolutely clear, but it seems to be moving in that direction. Anybody who knows anything about a farm will know that some of it will be grade 3a and some will be 3b; it is extremely hard to make out which is which. One field may be half 3a and half 3b. Therefore, what we should be saying is that all viable agricultural land should not be used for solar farms—full stop. Never mind grade 3a, 3b, 2 or 1: all agricultural land should be exempt, under planning law, from solar farms.

Equally, we ought to be making much more use of carve-outs for protected designations such as national parks and areas of outstanding national beauty. Most of my constituency is an AONB, and if AONBs were exempted, there would be no solar farms. We must take account of a landscape’s special characteristics, which we are not doing under the NPPF.

Councils also ought to be more ready to make the argument about the cumulative impact of solar farms. The NPPF seems to intimate that cumulative impact is allowable, but the planning inspector is unclear about that. We must be certain that the more solar farms there are in a particular place, the less likely it is that planning permission will be granted.

We must also develop arguments about food production as a legitimate economic consideration. Under the NPPF, if there is a legitimate economic consideration connected to a planning application, it will not go ahead. It is currently unclear whether food production is a legitimate economic consideration. Officers—and indeed, I think, officials in the Department—have said that it is quite hard to know whether or not agriculture could be classed as a legitimate economic consideration. I think that it definitely should be.

Let me give the Minister a list of things that I would like him to consider. He will not be able to answer them this afternoon, I am sure, but I have taken the opportunity of sending the list to the Department, so that he can consider it at his leisure if he wants to. I and—it seems—many of my colleagues in the Chamber this afternoon have a wish-list. There should be changes to national planning policy, allowing local authorities more scope to object to applications so that they can object on a much wider scale. Perhaps we should make the process similar to that for wind turbines. At the moment, it is much easier to turn down a wind turbine plant than a solar farm, but I think that solar farms and wind turbines should be treated in the same way in planning applications.

As I have said, there should be a prohibition on using grade 3 land, whether it is 3a or 3b, and we must not allow battery storage solutions to take land out of food production for use for solar. There should be much more of an imperative towards smaller installations on barns, factories, warehouse roofs and all the kinds of places that the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) mentioned a moment ago, instead of huge installations on greenfield sites and farmland.

An interesting point is that the prescribed limit on the distances involved must be shorter. We cannot have these solar farms 10 miles away from grid connection; the distance to grid connection must be shorter, so that we have solar farms where there is a grid connection. At the moment, partly by using battery storage solutions, developers are coming up with sites that are miles and miles away from the connection to the grid, which of course produces even further damage to the countryside.

Visibility is an important point. In my opinion, no solar farm should be generally visible within one mile of listed buildings or protected landscapes; I think the Minister would probably agree with that. That limit should also be extended to cover views, which planning law does not currently cover. Under planning law, people have no right to a view and a view cannot be considered under planning law. In the case of solar farms, a view is terribly important and therefore we should allow people to object to a solar farm because it damages their view. The views in the countryside are incredibly important. Such a change would demand a change to the NPPF, but only a very small one, and I think that allowing local people to object to a solar farm because it would destroy the view is perfectly legitimate.

In general, the point I am making is that at the moment local authorities are scared. They are scared that if they do not interpret the NPPF correctly—if they get one word wrong—the inspectors at appeal will, perfectly correctly, overturn their decision. What our local authorities need is absolute clarity. At a time like this—post-Ukraine—we value our agricultural land and we do not want to see our countryside being covered in solar farms and battery storage solutions. We think that producing food is important; indeed, food security is an incredibly important issue for the future.

We must provide local authorities with clarity of language in the revised NPPF, so that they can say straightforwardly, “No, you will not have that solar farm on this particular piece of agricultural land”, with the confidence that the inspector will agree with them rather than overturning their decision, which is what seems to be happening more or less automatically at the moment. We need to give local authorities that strength, that clarity and that power. If we do so, and if the developers, who are watching this debate today, know that they will not get permission for a development, they will not put in the application and will go somewhere else.

I just want that clarity. When the NPPF review comes out—I hope that will be shortly and certainly this year: the Minister may be able to update us on that soon—let us see some of these things written into it, to give local authorities that clarity and that strength when they come to turn down some of these ghastly applications.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will see who else is bobbing and feels worthy to follow Mr James Gray today, after his Sermon on the Mount. Members themselves can see who is bobbing. I want to call the Opposition spokesman at around 5.10 pm, so we are talking about four to five minutes each for each contribution; I do not want to set a formal time limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)]

It is a true pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. Not only will my performance not live up to that introduction, but sadly I am a very poor substitute for my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, who is currently in the main Chamber and preparing to steer the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill through Parliament. I will not be able to answer some of the questions that have been asked, but I will ensure that we get answers from a very learned source to ensure that hon. Members get some response.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) for his fine speech. We have all acknowledged how well informed it was and how intrepid he is, and his environmental credentials are unequalled in the room. I also express thanks for the contributions from other hon. Members. Some of them have already gone, but they were fine contributions none the less.

In our net zero strategy and British energy security strategy, the Government committed to securing and fully decarbonising the UK’s electricity supply. Crucially, we are considering how the planning system can further support our commitment to reaching net zero. The British energy security strategy sets out our plans to consult on some specific changes to the planning system to support delivery of renewable infrastructure, including solar farms. That energy strategy sets a clear ambition for a fivefold increase in deployment of the UK’s solar capacity, up to 70 GW, by 2035. That obviously means shifting up a gear in terms of deployment, but what it categorically does not mean is seizing large swathes of countryside and turning them into industrial solar farms and storage units. Yes, large-scale ground-mounted farms will be needed, but smaller commercial and domestic rooftop projects will be just as essential.

I will respond to some of the points made in the debate. On toughening up planning regulations in the NPPF to make sure that ground-mounted solar panels are not blighting the countryside, I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire that we will consult on amending planning rules in England to strengthen policy in favour of solar development on non-protected land. We intend to do this while making sure that local communities continue to have a real say over applications, with all the existing environmental protections remaining in place, and we will publish the consultation in due course. We are also committed to delivering on the commitments we made in the net zero strategy to review national planning policy, to make sure it contributes to climate change mitigation and adaption as fully as possible.

My hon. Friend referred to a few specific examples of planning applications in his constituency, as did others. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will understand that, given the quasi-judicial role of Ministers within the planning system, I am unable to comment on specifics; however, I can explain the Government’s position on planning policy for the matters raised. Currently, planning applications for projects up to 50 MW capacity in England are determined by local planning authorities. The vast majority of solar projects in England fall into that category, although clearly not the one mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). Councils will consider a range of factors when assessing applications, including the environmental impact.

For projects over 50 MW in England, and over 350 MW in Wales, planning decisions are made by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy through the nationally significant infrastructure project regime. This allows for rigorous scrutiny of such projects through an impartial examination process run by the Planning Inspectorate. Under the NSIP regime, developers must undertake considerable community engagement as part of the application process. Communities can participate in a formal examination process run by the Planning Inspectorate, which gives residents ample opportunity to make their views on a project known long before any decisions are taken. As right hon. and hon. Members will know, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will increase opportunities for community involvement even further.

It is probably a good idea for me to move away from my speech and respond to some of the points that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire mentioned battery facilities being of no use, but my understanding is that where we have battery facilities, we need less solar. The performance of solar obviously depends on the sun shining, whereas a battery facility allows us to capture the energy created while the sun is shining. We therefore do not need quite so many solar panels, because the scheme operates on a more efficient basis.

Regarding brownfield versus greenfield, the Government have a clear preference for brownfield development in many of our planning areas, and that also applies here. An excellent scheme in Wolverhampton has taken a landfill site and built a considerable solar facility that will feed the local hospital. We certainly have a preference for that in the Black Country.

My hon. Friend asked whether it is possible to have grazing continuing in and out of solar facilities. I am sorry to say that there is not a single solar farm in Walsall North, or not many of them, so I do not know whether grazing will continue. I will take his expertise on board and I will discuss this issue with our right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing when the opportunity arises. Hopefully my hon. Friend will forgive my lack of knowledge in that area.

The question of roof versus field was raised by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). At the moment, my understanding is that there is more or less a 50:50 balance between the production of solar energy in fields and on roofs. The Government intend to maintain that balance and we have some interesting things happening—for example, a part L uplift in the building regs, which is coming into force this month. When we change the building regs, we create notional buildings that show how we can achieve the new standard. The notional building for the part L uplift includes solar panels, so we expect that, from now on, further building regs will see more buildings—houses and commercial—built with solar panels in place.

[James Gray]

I understand that my hon. Friend is not the Minister responsible, but did I understand him correctly to say that he intends to maintain the split between green fields and roofs at 50:50? The whole thrust of the debate this afternoon has been that we do not want that maintained. We want significantly more solar power to be generated on brownfield sites and on buildings, and significantly less on fields. I would like to see it going to 70:30 or 80:20, or, come to that, 100% of solar farms being on reused land.

[Eddie Hughes]

It was meant to be reassuring. I was just saying that we will maintain the status quo at the very least, and that in terms of that balance it is not our intention to push for dramatically more farmland to be used for solar.

[James Gray]

I am terribly sorry and I am grateful to the Minister for giving way away. I do not want to enter into an argument, but that is not in the least bit reassuring. The reason why all these Members are in the Chamber today is because solar farm applications are being made in their constituencies. We do not want them to happen; we want them to stop. We want the land to remain agricultural land that can produce food. Just saying, “Oh, don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen, it will be absolutely fine. It is going to remain as it is now,” is no reassurance at all. We want the situation to change. We want to see fewer solar farms on agricultural land, not more or even the same number.

[Eddie Hughes]

Given that we need to achieve a fivefold increase in solar generation, we are going to have great difficulty in finding places to put that in a way that does not compromise people’s enjoyment of the countryside, at least in some small way. We need to find a way through this that means we achieve our net zero objective while not upsetting too many Members of this House or the public more generally.

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[James Gray]

It has been a unanimous debate this afternoon, Mr Paisley. All of us, on all sides of the House, agree that we want to see fewer solar farms and fewer battery storage solutions. We want to see agriculture and food production increased.

It was unanimous until we came to the Minister’s response to the debate, which I have to say was extraordinarily disappointing. I am horrified to hear the Government intend to increase the number of solar farms by 500% and that the Minister thinks that a ratio of 50:50 between fields and roofs, which is where we are at the moment, is reassuring. We want to see far, far fewer solar farms in the countryside.

I am extremely disappointed that the Minister was unable to tell us when the NPPF will be renewed. He was not able to reassure me that somehow or other these matters would be considered in that NPPF. I hope the Secretary of State will listen carefully to what has been said today.

Neighbourhood Plans

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of neighbourhood plans in national planning policy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership today, Ms Ghani. I thank the staff in Westminster Hall and colleagues who have come to speak in this important debate.

The public often do not think about planning as imperative to their lives, but it is something that happens to them all the time, whether they are conscious of it or not. People are usually only conscious of planning when it is pressed on top of them, and that is an important principle for us to think about. At the heart of this 90-minute debate is neighbourhood plans, which give local people the chance to take control of how they see development in their area. I think it would be useful to set out where neighbourhood plans came from, the problems with them and, most importantly, their future.

If we look at the history of neighbourhood plans, we see that the Localism Act 2011 allowed them to be brought forward. That Act allowed parishes and neighbourhood forums to develop neighbourhood development plans and neighbourhood orders. Neighbourhood plans were about the use and development of land, and they would contain a vision, aims, planning policies and proposals to improve the area, provide new facilities or allocate key sites for specific development, with a possible focus on social, economic and environmental issues. Neighbourhood development orders were for parish or town councils, or neighbourhood forums, to grant planning permission for certain kinds of development within a specific area. This was all held together with the legal framework— section 116 of the 2011 Act—that brought into effect schedule 9 to that Act and inserted into the Town and County Planning Act 1990 schedules 10 and 11.

The main object of neighbourhood plans was to guide and shape development in a particular area around national policies, while conforming to local strategic policies. Changes in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and in the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 sought to simplify and speed up neighbourhood planning processes, and allowed for greater intervention by the Secretary of State in the process of making neighbourhood plans. Further still, in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, local planning authorities were required to make both neighbourhood development plans and neighbourhood development orders

“as soon as reasonably practicable after the referendum is held”.

There was a further update in the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017, allowing neighbourhood plans to be modified and dealt with in situations where a plan is needed but covering slightly different geographical areas from the previous one. Finally, changes to the national planning policy framework in 2018 mean that neighbourhood plan policies for the supply of housing should not be considered out of date if the plan is less than two years old.

That is a little bit of background about neighbourhood plans and where they are at, but it is worth giving an overview of the process of getting a neighbourhood plan up to date. Draft plans and orders must pass an independent check and then be put to a local referendum. If there is a majority vote in favour, the local planning authority must adapt that plan, subject to legal compatibility.

The LPA has a statutory role to support neighbourhood planning, such as by undertaking independent examination of the neighbourhood plan, and it runs neighbourhood planning referendums. The Government state that neighbourhood planning should not be a way to block necessary developments. Neighbourhood plans should support the strategic needs set out in the local plan, and they cannot promote less development than is set out in said local plan.

Neighbourhood plans can allocate sites additional to those set out in the local plan and propose sites different from those in the local plan, in discussion with the LPA. The plan can identify areas for protection, such as open spaces valued by the community or green spaces that meet local green space criteria.

That is where we have come from and, broadly speaking, it is a great approach to take forward. I think most in the House would agree that the principles enshrined in this legislation are moving in the right direction, but what is the reality we are living with at the moment? It is fair to say that neighbourhood plans are not for everyone, nor should they be. Communities should want to come forward to design and shape the planning of their community —in essence, the shape and feel of what they have.

In my area of Bosworth, many groups have come forward by choice to make a difference and take responsibility for their local planning area. A second reason for doing so is necessity, because the system is failing. There are no protections, because we do not have an up-to-date local plan. Let me explain what we are living with at the moment. I have two tiers of council: a county council and a borough council. The borough council is responsible for the local plan, but the county council intersects with the infrastructure and the signing off of that plan, and this is all done through the framework of national planning.

Planning is a very difficult issue for an MP. The most common issue in my inbox is inappropriate development in my area. At the same time, people ask me to step in and make changes to individual planning applications. We all know that an MP cannot do that. Without an up-to-date local plan, it is open season in my area. It is a desirable place to live, set perfectly in the heart of the UK. Quite literally, we have the middle of England in my constituency. We have beautiful rural countryside and we are close to the city of Leicester, so the area has a lot to offer. The problem is that with a piecemeal approach to planning, we have huge problems to solve with infrastructure and providing the amenities and services we need.

Across the House, we all agree that nationally we need more houses, but that message seems to have been lost locally, with the Liberal Democrats saying that the issue is the Government’s agenda of putting in 300,000 houses. However, in the “Access to Affordable Housing” section of their 2019 manifesto, the Liberal Democrats state that they will:

“Build at least 100,000 homes for social rent each year and ensure that total housebuilding increases to 300,000 each year.”

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the Liberal Democrats and the fuss they make about all this. Is it not disappointing that no Liberal Democrat Member has chosen to come to this extremely important debate on the subject?

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[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am most grateful to you for your chairmanship, Ms Ghani, and for promoting me. I am, in fact, just Mr James Gray at this stage, though you never know; it might be in the post. It is most kind of you, none the less.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I withdraw my Sir from the record.

[James Gray]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. My congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) on securing the debate, and on explaining what is often an abstruse, complicated and difficult area, in the clearest and most sensible terms. The way he framed his speech was extremely useful, and it will be well read up and down the country by local authorities and others who are considering neighbourhood planning.

I agree with my hon. Friend that planning should be about how many houses and where. I would add “and when”, because the timing of development is extremely important. I am a strong supporter of neighbourhood planning, and I had the great luck to be here in 2011 when the Localism Act was one of the first to be passed by the coalition Government.

We brought in neighbourhood planning, because we felt that decisions about planning should be given to the lowest possible level. We thought that local people should be allowed to decide what houses they want, where and when, as well as what the rest of the neighbourhood should look like. I am glad that Malmesbury in my constituency was one of the first places to spend an enormous amount of time and effort on bringing forward a neighbourhood plan. It is a very good document that works extremely well, and many other places around the country have based their neighbourhood plans on the Malmesbury example.

Neighbourhood planning is a great idea that I strongly favour, but I have three little reservations, which the Minister might be able to answer in his wind-up. Alternatively, he might be able to include some of these notions in the amendments that are no doubt coming forward to the Levelling up and Regeneration Bill, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth said, starts its progress through Parliament tomorrow.

My first reservation is that in neighbourhood planning, there is a presumption in favour of expansion. It is not possible for any neighbourhood to say, “We like it precisely as it is today. We want no more houses. We do not want any change. We would like it to stay as it is.” No matter how beautiful, how perfect or how remote the neighbourhood may be, the neighbourhood plan, by definition, presumes that there will be growth.

The neighbourhood plan people go around and have the following conversation with people in their houses. “How many children have you got? Would you like them to remain in the village?” “Oh, yes, I would.” “Are there any houses?” “No, there are not, because in this village every house costs £1 million, and there are no houses for them at all.” “Oh, jolly good. Three children; that’s three more houses for this village.” The neighbourhood plan writes into itself a presumption in favour of growth. In some places, that makes sense. If there is a way to bring in low-cost housing for local people, that is much to be desired.

None the less, the principle of looking simply at the number of children under 10 in the village and working out from that how many houses will be needed in 20 years’ time is totally flawed. Like it or not, our children tend to go off to the nearest big town or city and will not remain in a remote little rural village. The houses built on that presumption tend to be three, four or five-bedroom houses for executives who come in from elsewhere. It is no longer about low-cost housing for local people. It becomes an unreasonable development of that area. That is my first reservation: neighbourhood planning presumes growth in the number of houses, and I think that is wrong.

My second reservation is perhaps easier to deal with, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth touched on it briefly. Under revisions that were made to legislation in 2018 or 2019, the Government brought in the stipulation that the neighbourhood plan is valid for only two years. That might have seemed a good idea at the time, but it takes about two years to develop a neighbourhood plan. By the time it comes to the consideration of a big planning application of the kind that we see across Wiltshire at the moment, the neighbourhood plan is out of date. There is no point in having it if two years later we say, “It is no longer an important document.” All of the thousands of person hours put into creating a neighbourhood plan in the first place are, by that means, wasted. We should look again at the stipulation of a two-year limit on the validity of a neighbourhood plan. We could perhaps reverse it and say that the neighbourhood plan will be valid unless local people ask for it to be changed, and that it remains valid not for all time but perhaps with a 20 or 30-year limit, so that by and large the neighbourhood plan becomes the rule.

My third reservation about neighbourhood planning is slightly more complicated, but I will take the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth and try to make this as straightforward as I possibly can. It is a consistent problem in Wiltshire. The five-year housing land supply figures that are used in considering whether an application should be allowed are based on the completion of estates in the area. In other words, if the planning inspector is worried about it and Wiltshire Council is correctly concerned so it turns down an application for a big development, the inspector will then look at the five-year housing land supply figure, which I will come back to in a second, and almost inevitably find in favour of the developer. There is a big presumption in favour of the developer under those conditions. That of course means that Wiltshire Council lands up paying the barristers’ fees, which can often be substantial.

Unsurprisingly, officers have been correctly saying, “We must be very careful as councillors. We must not allow you to turn something down if we believe you will then lose at appeal.” That is where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth says, the local and the national intertwine in the person of the planning inspector, who considers the rules under the national planning policy framework, and by and large they tend to favour the developer.

I mentioned in passing the notion of the five-year housing land supply figure. This is a complex area of the law, but the law states that the local authority is required under the local plan to make available enough housing land that is readily developable for five years. If that figure is based, as I understand it is, on completions—estates that are completed—we are by definition writing into the law a presumption that the developer will not complete it. We see that all the time in Wiltshire. Developers go out of their way not to complete the development, not to provide the primary school that was part of the section 106 agreement, and not to complete the number of houses. By that means they can say that the development has got 500 houses, that it is not complete, and therefore it does not form part of the five-year housing land supply. That means Wiltshire Council has consistently got 4.6 years and 4.8 years rather than five years, and that means the inspector will then always say, “The developer has it. The developer will get it because Wiltshire has not completed the five-year housing land supply figure.”

The situation is unfair because we have written into the system a presumption in favour of developers not doing what they ought to be doing and completing the estate. A simple change would correct that: instead of the figure being based on completions in an area, it could be based on planning permission granted on land. If every time a developer who had a completable application granted said, “I am going to build 500 houses on that piece of land there and I can demonstrate it can be done”, that should count against the five-year housing land supply, which would then mean that Wiltshire, for example, would have something like a six-year housing land supply and therefore local people could decide where and when they wanted the housing.

At the moment, the neighbourhood plan is a worthless piece of paper. All that happens is that local people say, “We want housing there and there”, but an inspector says, “I am very sorry. With the five-year housing land supply, your neighbourhood plan is a waste of time. It is a worthless piece of paper and I am going to overrule you. And not only that; I am going to give you £100,000-worth of barristers’ fees against the council tax payer”, and of course the council does not want to do that.

Now is the time to change, probably under the new Bill. The Minister might like to consider very carefully this question of the five-year housing land supply, detailed as it may seem. I may be proved wrong—I am no expert in these matters—but there is a straightforward and simple way of correcting things. Instead of the five-year housing land supply being based on completions, it could be based on developable planning permissions granted.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth for calling this excellent debate. It is a terribly important time. We have to supply houses for our people. The Conservative Government’s plan to provide 300,000 houses—if I remember rightly—is extremely good, and we have to find a way of doing that. We have a great problem with homelessness and the lack of housing. The question, though, is where those houses should be and when they should be built.

At the moment, the planning system does not take account of local interests and beliefs and neighbourhood planning. It takes account of nationally set targets, which tend to trump the wishes of local people. I very much hope that during the passage of the Bill, which will start tomorrow, the Government will consider some of these detailed points and change the Bill in such a way as to ensure that the interests of local people are looked after when we decide how many houses will be built and when and where.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is right. One of the big issues I have seen in my own constituency, and during my time in this role, arises when councils do not have a local plan in place—and even if they do in some instances. If they do not have the five-year land supply, there is speculative development that happens all over the place, and it pits communities against any sort of housing development. We are making it very clear in the Bill—and supporting documents will be published alongside it—that where an area has an up-to-date local plan, there is no need for it to prove that it has a five-year land supply to stop that speculative development happening.

[James Gray]

I very much welcome that stipulation in the Bill. However, will the Minister consider one of the problems that I suspect may arise, namely that if we give notice to developers that that clause is coming into effect in a year’s time, or that the local plan might well take a few more months or a year to complete, in the meantime there might be a deluge of speculative developments that we cannot stop, until such time as the law has become an Act?

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend made that point in a conversation we had the other day. It is a valid point and one that I am taking back to the Department to double-check that we have all that in place, because it is important.

I mentioned the neighbourhood plan in Dorset, but closer to home in London, in Newham, is the Greater Carpenters neighbourhood plan. That post-war estate is seeking to develop and reoccupy existing empty homes. The policy emphasises affordability, prioritising low-cost family-sized homes and homes for older and disabled people. It is a textbook example of community-backed sustainable development. We want more areas to follow that lead, so we have put in place £40 million of funding up until 2023 to ensure that residents have the tools and resources that they need to get their plans in place.

In many ways, therefore, neighbourhood planning has been a great success story, but the Government and I want to encourage more communities to become involved and have a real say in what is built locally and where. That is why the Bill that has been mentioned on many occasions today includes the important role that neighbourhood plans will continue to play in the planning system. It makes it clear that communities will be able to continue allocating sites for housing, protecting green spaces and local assets, and setting design requirements for new developments through their plans. Crucially, the Bill will strengthen the role of neighbourhood plans in decision making. Planning application decisions will only be able to depart from plans if there are strong reasons to do so.

Neighbourhood planning is widespread, but—I take the point made by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook)—take-up is uneven across the country. In some areas, usually in towns and cities, there is little neighbourhood planning activity. We recognise that some communities have faced challenges in getting a neighbourhood plan in place, and we want to ensure that all areas can become involved.

Through the Bill, we will introduce neighbourhood priority statements—a new additional tool to provide a simpler, faster and more accessible way for communities to participate in neighbourhood planning and to shape development in their local areas. The statements can be prepared by neighbourhood planning groups and can be used to set out the community’s priorities and preferences for their local area, on everything from the new facilities that they need to the buildings and green spaces that they want to be protected. In fact, we anticipate that in some areas the statements might also act as a springboard for preparing a full neighbourhood plan, a design code or other community initiatives outside the planning system. Councils will be required to consider statements when they prepare their own local plans, meaning that neighbourhood priorities cannot be brushed aside easily; statements have to be treated as formal input. Taken together, we are confident that the reforms will further cement—forgive the pun—the role of neighbourhood planning in the system. Perhaps more importantly, that will provide communities with more opportunity to influence development right on their doorstep.

I will turn to a couple of the points made by Members. I want to make it clear that I am a huge fan of neighbourhood planning. I am fortunate enough to have a parish council and a town council—in Rawdon and Horsforth, respectively—as well as a group of volunteers in Aireborough, developing neighbourhood planning. I have seen at first hand the enormous amount of time that they put into developing the plans.

In the first few weeks of doing this role, I was keen to do a roundtable with neighbourhood planning groups around the country. It was useful to listen to their experiences. We have taken on board a lot of what they said and we are looking at how we can make further improvements. Among a number of the points made today, however, was the argument that where such planning is locally driven, we often see more houses built. I was particularly struck by a council official, I think from Herefordshire, saying that because the council had invested in and supported neighbourhood planning, it had ended up seeing more houses built than it could possibly have achieved as a council. I would like to see that happen elsewhere.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth was right when he said that too often planning is something that people feel happens to them, and we have to change that. That is why, in the Bill, we want to make local plan making easier so that more people can engage and can do so digitally and not to have go through hundreds of PDFs and complicated documents. He is right that it is about building the right houses in the right places. That will get public support for house building and stop the problems that we have seen. He is right to have mentioned the BIDEN principles, which really do stand for many of the things that we want to see, and he was completely right to raise the issue of older people’s housing too. We will soon establish a taskforce to look into that so that we provide our older generation with a choice of housing—not just one type of housing—so that we can help them downsize if they want to. They will not be forced to.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Gray]

Does the Minister agree that there is one other area that needs to be looked at, particularly in the area of older people’s housing—namely, better use of the stock that we have? There are at this moment 800,000 empty houses in the United Kingdom. We must find a way of making better use of them. Many of those empty houses are old people’s houses that they have inherited or perhaps moved out of. It seems they do not know what to do with them. Can we find a way of writing into the Bill some means by which we can make better use of the existing stock?

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not just about building new homes, but making sure there is efficient use of the stock that we have, and there are measures in the Bill to try to encourage the use of empty homes.

The two-year validity of a plan was raised at the roundtable. Again, it is something that we are looking at. I have mentioned the issue of the five-year land supply. The issue of local housing need figures is also something that we are trying to resolve as quickly as possible.

I love the fact that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) comes to each of these debates to give a Northern Ireland perspective, which is particularly helpful on this matter. I remember a few people scratching their heads in a debate when I was talking about HS2. I thought, “If I can’t even get it to Leeds, how are we going to get it to Northern Ireland?”, but there we go. He was right to talk about areas of outstanding natural beauty and protections for them. Neighbourhood planning could be more imaginative about the sites that could be developed. I have seen that in my own community where people are really very clever. He was also right to talk about the provision of infrastructure. That is why the “I” in BIDEN is so important. The levy that we are introducing will capture more of the land value so that there is more money for the local community.

One thing that I have certainly picked up is that we need better engagement between local planning development and the provision of health services so that they all come at the same time. People are frustrated when they see the houses and years later, if ever, the infrastructure that is needed to support them comes down the line. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) was right to say that local people know best. The design standards that we are putting in the Bill will be a key feature for many local communities, and new developments will complement the local area.

On development management policy, I know that people are concerned, but it is not meant to override a local plan, which has supremacy because it is the local plan. However, there is an enormous amount of duplication in the development of local plans—for example, protections for the green belt, heritage sites and so on. Many local authorities are not confident that there is enough weight in the current system, so the policy is to try to stop that duplication and make sure we have protections in place. Again, I have listened to colleagues’ concerns and we are actively looking at many of the points that have been made.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

We certainly want people such as Heidi to achieve the home that they want. Through Help to Buy, right to buy, right to acquire, help to build and a variety of mechanisms, including our 95% fixed-term mortgage guarantee, there is a multiplicity of ways in which we can get people on to the housing ladder. The hon. Lady also asks about our planning reforms, and I can tell her that she will be hearing more about those in due course.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am sure that the Minister would agree that by far the best people to decide how many homes we want and where they should be are local people. Would he therefore agree with me and the town of Malmesbury in my constituency, which raised the point that the neighbourhood plan, which this Conservative Government brought in, is currently being trumped by the so-called five-year housing land supply figures, which are handed down by central Government? Will he give me a hint as to whether greater importance will be given in the forthcoming housing White Paper to neighbourhood planning, thereby allowing local people to decide how many houses they want and where?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, because it gives me the opportunity to make it clear that it is for local communities to determine how many homes they want and need in their vicinity. Local housing need numbers are not an end point; they are a starting point. It is for local authorities to determine what constraints they may face to determine the numbers of homes that they need in their area. They then agree those numbers with the Planning Inspectorate to set a sound plan, and that is then the number that the local authorities build toward. Local authorities that fail to set an up-to-date plan leave their constituents at risk of speculative development, so it is for local authorities to set the numbers and make their plans.

Learned Societies at Burlington House

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing the debate and on an outstanding campaign that he has waged over the past few months on behalf of the learned societies. It has been a model of good lobbying of the best possible kind. I agree with everything he and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) have said. I will not repeat it, to cut things reasonably short.

I am reminded of Churchill’s great remark, I think about this place originally.

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”

That quotation applies very much to the learned societies. They shaped those buildings and we shaped them together, over a matter of 200 years, or thereabouts. The shape and existence of those buildings and the things in them shape the learned societies. It would not be possible to remove them willingly and put them into an industrial estate somewhere on the outskirts of London. It would simply not work. Those buildings and the learned societies are integral to each other.

That applies to so many other great Government owned or publicly owned buildings across our nation. With those other buildings—cathedrals, churches, this palace, Buckingham Palace and the MOD buildings—the Government have taken an extremely sensible view over many years, which is to conclude that they are worth nothing. They are not worth anything; they cannot be sold. This palace could not be sold and is, therefore, worth nothing. Of course, it costs money to maintain but it cannot be sold.

The problem behind this particular episode is that the Government have concluded that the building is a valuable asset that they own, and which they can therefore sell or otherwise maximise income from it. That is the wrong presumption. That building was not set up as a Government asset, which could be subsequently sold. It was set up to be the home of the learned societies. Therefore, we require an extremely radical approach, not through a renegotiation of the lease, which cannot succeed. The lease cannot work and they cannot afford to pay the rent, so there is no point renegotiating it. These learned societies cannot pay a rent to the Government. Therefore, let us consider renegotiating it fundamentally. If we depreciate the value of an asset, that depreciation cannot count against profit and loss. It must not work at all.

I would like to think that the Government will consider not bleeding the assets, which is what they are effectively trying to do, whether through rent or another way. We should not be bleeding the assets; they are cultural and historic assets and they should belong to and be preserved by the nation. There are all sorts of ways of making sure they do not cost anything. None the less, the notion that a building, worth billions, freehold, should somehow become a national asset that is there to bleed seems to me to be entirely wrong. The capital value should be set at zero—the same applies to a great many other national assets of one sort or another. This is a political decision. It is not a cultural one; it is not a financial one; it is a political decision.

We need a Government who will say, “This is an asset to our nation. This is an asset that we want to preserve. This is an asset that does more for our nation”— £47 million worth more for our nation, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. Bleeding it, getting rent out of it and selling it off would achieve nothing for the cultural and intellectual assets of the United Kingdom. Finding a way of keeping the learned societies there, finding a way of making it possible for them to succeed in that location, seems to be something that we as a Government ought to be doing.

I hope that the Minister, in his reply, will not simply talk about the renegotiation. I want to hear a really radical restart to say, “These assets must be left as they are.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes]

I am sure I will repeat this later on, but we have made our pitch to the learned societies and we are awaiting their response. Given the commercial sensitivity of those negotiations, it important that we wait to hear from the learned societies themselves about what they think the way forward will be.

We must acknowledge that the growth in annual rent under the lease contract has been unpredictable. UK rents have grown significantly since 2005, causing a significant challenge for the learned societies. Achieving a rent that represents value for money to the taxpayer while giving security and certainty for the learned societies is the Department’s goal, and we hope to achieve that in collaboration with the learned societies.

Rent for 2020-21 financial year is £15.35 per square foot, which was agreed through the formula and is some 70% lower than the £50 per square foot that is the current market value for similar use—as I said, for educational purposes, not compared with the much more expensive commercial properties. That was agreed by both parties. However, we have heard the real financial concerns of the five learned societies, and the issue has received significant media coverage. In 2019, the societies sought a grant from our Department that would allow them to purchase a 125-year lease from us at a peppercorn rent. We assessed the proposal and of course considered the benefits, which are incredibly difficult to put a value on, of keeping the learned societies at Burlington House.

The Treasury’s Green Book rules require us to assume that if a learned society vacated Burlington House, it could be replaced by a similar tenant who would meet the cost of the rent at the market rate. So, it is not in our Department’s gift to grant that peppercorn lease. I fully appreciate that others have said that different options might be available to the Treasury, but considering such options is clearly way above my pay grade.

[James Gray]

Will the Minister not accept that he is missing the point? We are saying that this cannot be done—this building cannot be leased at a commercial rent. We want the Government to assess the building as having cultural value and preferably to give it entirely free of charge to these learned societies. And the notion that somehow or other, over 85 years, the rent may rise to the market rate is ludicrous. It cannot do so—these societies will go broke, these collections will be ruined and the Government will be to blame. We want the Government to renegotiate fundamentally and to charge them nothing.

[Eddie Hughes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution; the suggestion that he has made is clearly one for the Treasury to consider. However, in the meantime—as I said at the outset—it is the Department’s starting position that we are determined to try to keep the learned societies at Burlington House. So, as we enter into negotiations with them, I am sure that we will have the opportunity to discuss options further.

In January last year, we explained that we could not proceed with a peppercorn rent arrangement and proposed a simplified agreement, which involved slow convergence to the market rent by 2085. We subsequently held further discussions and recently we have put forward the proposal that I referred to, in order to provide security and guarantee predictable future rents for the learned societies, protecting them from market volatility while ensuring that they only have to pay market rent at the end of the lease.

This proposal is predicated on what I believe is a fair and reasonable condition that the learned societies should work with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and its arm’s length bodies to become more accessible to the wider public and to advance their cultural and educational agenda, so that the societies’ work continues to benefit as many communities as possible. The societies’ future must also reflect a more open and commercial existence, in order to identify and deliver alternative sources of income.

In his opening speech, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham mentioned the fact that there would be a restriction stopping the societies from having, for example, a coffee shop. I am sure that restriction is in place now, but it would be open to us to enter into discussions as to whether we could make changes of use, or to see whether there are other opportunities that could be pursued for commercial purposes. It is important to engender a conversation and get that discussion under way.

I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for saying that I cannot refer in detail to the negotiations that are under way. However, what I can say at the moment is that both parties are in the early stages of the negotiations, and I very much hope that a constructive and positive dialogue will result in the learned societies remaining in Burlington House for the foreseeable future.

In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend again for raising this issue today and I thank the other Members who have made pertinent and important contributions to the debate. The Government want to continue working closely with the five learned societies and indeed with MPs from all parties in the House, following their valuable contributions today, to ensure that the outcome of our negotiations is a positive one and that we make sure that the learned societies remain in Burlington House for the future, safe in the nation’s capital, where they can continue for generations to come.

Live Events and Weddings: Covid-19 Support

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 329339 and 332789, relating to support for live events and weddings during covid-19.

E-petition 329339 relates to the number of guests permitted at weddings during the coronavirus pandemic, and e-petition 332789 relates to support for nightclubs, festivals and the live events industry. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who are in Westminster Hall for this Petitions Committee debate this afternoon.

I will turn first to the petition on weddings. This is particularly important to me, because I myself have had to postpone my wedding that I was supposed to have in July, but before I go on to lament that, it is important to know exactly what we are debating this afternoon. Just over 110,000 people have signed this petition so far, including 150 of my own constituents in Carshalton and Wallington, and the prayer of the petition states the following:

“Weddings take months and even years of intricate planning. Myself and many others believe the maximum number of guests authorised at wedding ceremonies should be increased. The number of guests permitted at weddings should be calculated according to venue capacity.

For instance, if a venue has a capacity of 600 people social distancing could still be practised with 1/5 of this number. People should not have to alter their plans if social distancing is observed. Surely, if beaches are allowed to remain open, weddings should be permitted to go ahead considering appropriate measures are put in place. It is more than apparent social distancing is not practised at such public places of leisure, thus guidelines for weddings should be reconsidered.”

As the Government outlined in their response, before we entered into a second national lockdown, weddings could take place, but numbers were restricted to 15 or 30 people. Sadly, once again, weddings are now restricted to deathbed weddings. I have heard worrying testimony from Professor Sandberg from Cardiff University, who pointed Some areas insist that deathbed weddings can take place only in a hospital setting, which has denied some couples in really tragic circumstances the ability to tie the knot. I would be glad if the Minister takes that point away.

I understand some of the arguments that have been made—some were directed at me when my wedding got cancelled. There is the argument that two people who are in love should not need a big event to get married; they can have a smaller ceremony now and leave a big party to later. There is also the argument that people will always need to get married, so the wedding events industry will survive. Those arguments fail to acknowledge a few key difficulties, including the planning involved in putting a wedding on, and the wider effect on the industry and some of the traditions associated with weddings.

That last point is demonstrated by the story of the petitioner, Zaynah Ali:

“My brother was due to get married in August and coming from an Asian-Pakistani background we had planned this big wedding and had been doing so for well over a year.

I felt sadness, anger and every other relating emotions, I guess what made it even more emotional was the fact my brother’s wife to be had lost her dad to cancer when she was a baby.

The fact her father couldn’t be there for her big day was heart-breaking enough but the fact my grandparents couldn’t give her away in true Pakistani style made it that much harder.

They almost felt like they had failed her father.

There were also a few personal reasons as to why we did not want to postpone the wedding and I’m sure many people were in the same situation.”

I can indeed confirm that many are in that situation. My wedding had to be postponed due to the number of guests we had hoped to have. Like many others, we had planned for over two years. Postponing had an effect not only on us, but on the caterers, florists, decorators, entertainment, marquee companies and everyone else involved in putting on a wedding. I have spoken to local businesses, such as the Function Junction in Wallington, which supplies decorations for weddings and live events. It told me that while some people, like me, have decided to postpone and use the same supplier later, many, due to the uncertainty of coronavirus, have decided to cancel all together and not set a new date. That leaves the couple devastated and the business out of pocket.

According to research, the industry has already lost most of its planned weddings for the first quarter for 2021, and is facing pressures on those in the second quarter. If it has no commitment before July, the sector tells me that it will lose most of its revenue up to June 2021 or beyond, and even runs the risk of collapsing fully. I ask, therefore, that the Government look carefully at liberalising the restrictions around weddings once we come out of the second national lockdown and set out a road map for reopening the wedding industry in the longer term.

We hope and pray that a vaccine will allow weddings to take place normally some time soon—we have had some good news today—but we must also have a plan B for living longer-term with the virus. I argue, like the petitioners, that this could begin after the lockdown, with amending the guidance on weddings to allow for greater guest capacity based on the venue.

Many countries in Europe have permitted weddings with socially distanced numbers; in some places, the number is capped at, say, 100 in the equivalent of our tier 1 or lower-risk environments. Even in the UK, Northern Ireland operated socially distanced weddings since June, until the more recent restrictions were brought in. Weddings were granted parity with the hospitality sector, and there are no known outbreaks associated with weddings in Northern Ireland. That proves that it can work. In the longer term, weddings seem to me the perfect place to trial rapid testing. Given the planning involved, it is relatively easy to share details prior to the event, conduct testing on arrival, if necessary, and test and trace after the event. I hope that will be considered as a potential place to pilot rapid testing.

I have spoken about the impact of the pandemic on the industry. Further restrictions and uncertainty will only cause further damage. A commitment to socially distanced weddings, rapid testing trials and equitable support for the wedding industry, along with other hospitality businesses, will help to deliver a bounce back for this industry.

To date, over 145,000 people have signed the e-petition on live events, including 236 from my constituency. The petition states:

“The government has failed to provide specific support to UK festivals, dance venues and nightclubs. Covid-19 has hit hard on the nightlife sector having a major impact due to the suspension of mass gatherings. Followed by unclear guidelines and a lack of commitment…this has contributed to growing uncertainty within the arts sector, putting at risk millions of jobs. The government must make clear its commitment to ensuring the dance community survives the pandemic. #LetUSDance”.

I have been extremely grateful in preparing for the debate to the lead petitioners, Jasper and Anthony, as well as the Night Time Industries Association, for taking the time to share their concerns with me and explain the issues that the sector faces in a bit more detail. The figures are quite stark. The night-time economy is the UK’s fifth largest sector. It contributes £66 billion a year to the economy—6% of the UK total—and provides in the region of 1.3 million jobs, alongside an entire supply line of creative freelancers, sole traders and skilled technicians. Significant parts of the sector, unlike other hospitality businesses, have not been able to open at all since lockdown in March—particularly night clubs. Some venues have indeed invested heavily in becoming covid-secure, or have even repurposed. However, even those venues have been able to trade only at a fraction of their previous capacity. Many have also raised concerns about the implementation of the arbitrary 10 pm curfew. Now we are facing another national lockdown, and the uncertainty is growing. There are calls from the sector for an urgent set of sector-specific support packages.

Prior to the new national lockdown a survey was commissioned by the Night Time Industries Association and its members, and some pretty devastating statistics came out of it: 72% of businesses said they were unable to open or trade; 58% feared that they would not survive longer than two months after a job retention scheme came to an end; and 71% said they were set to make more than half their workforce redundant. Just a third said that they were able to repurpose. The average cost of repurposing was anywhere between £10,000 and £30,000, and 84% of businesses were achieving only 10% to 50% of their normal trade. That was on top of growing concerns about the implementation of a 10 pm curfew. The night-time economy was seen by many as being the target of restrictions despite evidence from Public Health England indicating that infection transmission in hospitality was only about 4%. The danger was that the curfew could drive people to congregate in the streets, in mass gatherings outside, or even to continue their night in unsafe, unregulated and illegal gatherings behind closed doors.

I have spoken to people from hospitality businesses in Carshalton and Wallington, who have expressed similar concerns. Thankfully, loyal customers came back to popular local businesses such as the Ginger Italian and the Duke’s Head, once hospitality was allowed to reopen partially. However, the 10 pm curfew was felt to be stunting their ability to recover. There have been further concerns about the allocation of support grants and packages, as there were fears that the contemporary dance music scene was not taken into account properly in Arts Council England funding allocations.

Night-time businesses and their supply chains have recognised that they need to put public health first, and they have worked incredibly hard to make themselves covid-safe for when the time comes, but they need clarity, in the form of a road map to reopening, so that they can prepare financially. The NTIA has a number of asks about finances, which include the continuation of employment support guaranteeing 80% of wages, an extension of the self-employed income support scheme, a sector-specific grant system proportionate to the operating costs of frontline businesses and the supply chain, a workable commercial rent solution, a reduced rate of VAT for hospitality throughout 2021, a business rates holiday for 2021-22 and, ultimately, the all-important strategy for exit from lockdown.

There are fears in the industry that without those measures we risk losing our nightlife and, indeed, our cultural heritage, for good. So again, while I say that today’s news is good and we hope that a vaccine might be coming fast, to allow some semblance of normality to come back, we have to have a plan for both sectors to live with the virus. Repeated lockdowns, as the Government have said, are not the answer. Further restrictions could well mean that the industry is not there to recover in the end.

In both the cases that I have spoken about, I urge the Government to look carefully at the concerns raised by the industry and at what support could be made available in the short term. Most importantly, for weddings and for live events, I urge them to set out a clear road map for reopening, so that businesses can begin to bounce back.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

I am asked to advise the Chamber that if Members want to avail themselves of a clean cup there are cups at the back of the Chamber.

A glance around the Chamber demonstrates that there are a large number of people seeking to speak. Rather than my imposing a formal time limit, which I think substitutes quantity for quality, it might be courteous to others if hon. Members restrict themselves to roughly three minutes per head from now onwards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I thank and congratulate colleagues. We are doing well, so the remaining speakers can probably speak for about four minutes, if they want to. I call Karen Bradley.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Gray. I do hope the fact that I chair a Committee that you sit on has not somehow swayed you into giving me more time than other people.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Reduced to one minute.

[Karen Bradley]

I will remember that when we meet on Wednesday.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for his excellent opening speech and for setting the scene so well. Given that I have only four minutes, I will focus on just one issue: wedding venues. Like many hon. Members, I have been contacted by so many people who have been affected—couples whose big day has not happened or has been seriously scaled down, and the businesses that supply wedding venues.

I want to focus on two unique venues in my constituency: Heaton House Farm and The Ashes. Heaton House Farm is in Rushton Spencer, and The Ashes in is Endon—both are in Staffordshire Moorlands. They are bespoke wedding venues; they do not do anything else. They offer large events and are licensed venues. They have the most incredible scenery. If you have been lucky enough to sit in the hairdresser’s and read Hello! or OK! magazines, Mr Gray, you will have seen the venues, because they host the celebrity weddings that feature in these great, august publications. However, they simply have no business at all at the moment—they have nothing. As the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) said, they could not benefit from “eat out to help out”, because they do not offer food outside weddings and large events. They cannot benefit from the VAT reduction, because they have no turnover—they are not making any money at the moment.

The Heaton House Farm team have taken over running a community pub in Rushton Spencer, The Royal Oak, just to find somewhere to employ their staff. Without that, they will lose their staff. They are not making a single penny on that; they are doing it so that they can keep their staff and to make sure that when they can get back to having weddings, they can do so in the best way they possibly can. They do not benefit from many of the grants because their rateable values are too high—they simply need to be able to get back to holding weddings. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said, they can hold a wedding service, but they could not sit the guests until the regulations changed to allow 15, and yet those guests could go to the local pub and up to 60 of them could sit, socially distanced, in tables of six. That cannot be right. We have to find a way through this. I invite the Minister to meet my constituents from Heaton House Farm and The Ashes to discuss the issue to see what support the Government can find to help those incredibly special places.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I note the right hon. Gentleman’s approach, and I am interested in the fact that he is perhaps now interested in delivering Brexit, even though everything he has said thus far suggests that his party is trying to stop it. I take on board what he has said. This is why we have made funding available to ports such as Portsmouth, and discussions have taken place between Portsmouth and the Department for Transport. He also raised the broader issue of support for local authorities, and this is why we remain in close contact with local government and why we still have £10 million available for any immediate pressures that may emerge in the forthcoming year.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

What is all this money for?

[James Brokenshire]

Councils have been preparing for a range of issues. As we leave the European Union, changes to regulations might be required and training and support might be needed, as well as contingency planning so that we have a smooth transition from where we are today to leaving the European Union.

Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. A glance round the Chamber shows that plenty of hon. Members wish to speak. I do not really believe in time limits, but if colleagues could honourably restrict themselves to four or five minutes each, it would be a courtesy.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the Homeless Reduction Act—a really ground-breaking piece of legislation very much emphasising a preventive agenda to prevent people from becoming homeless at all. Local authorities have received an additional £72.7 million to implement the Act, and the homelessness advice and support team has been providing support. But we need to ensure that more is done and we will certainly be reviewing the implementation of the Act by March next year.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is often alleged, perhaps anecdotally, that a disproportionate number of rough sleepers are people with a military background, perhaps suffering from drug or drink abuse or from post-traumatic stress disorder. Does the Department have any statistical method for checking whether that allegation is correct? If so, there would be things that could be done with the armed services as well as through the Department.

[James Brokenshire]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we are working with the Ministry of Defence on support that can be provided to veterans who need our help and backing because they have ended up, for whatever reason, on the street. He is right to say that we need better data, and that is what we seek to achieve.