Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I will say three things as briefly as I can. First, the national planning policy framework that will be published in July will say significantly more about how we can drive improved environmental outcomes. Secondly, there is in the Bill a new streamlined approach to ensuring that all development is in accordance with the highest environmental standards. Thirdly, as the hon. Lady knows, under the 25-year environment plan and with the creation of the Office for Environmental Protection, the non-regression principle is embedded in everything that we do. The leadership that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has shown, not least at COP26, in driving not just this country but the world towards net zero should reassure her on that front.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am pleased that the Secretary of State believes in more devolution. How much extra devolved power will our councils get to settle the very important issue of how much housing investment we should welcome?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend gets to the heart of two of the most important measures in this Bill: strengthening local leadership and reforming our planning system in order to put neighbourhoods firmly in control.

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[Lisa Nandy]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about doom gloom around the north of England, but I have just told him about the life-changing jobs that were brought to those communities by action taken under the last Labour Government. I have just told him what ambition looks like, and what levelling up looks like in action. If he thinks that that is doom and gloom, I dread to think what he thinks about the legacy of his Government.

In fairness to the Secretary of State—I feel I ought to say something nice to him; if he could see the faces behind him, he would not feel very cheerful—it is not his door and mind that have been completely closed, but the Treasury’s, and it is the Treasury that calls the shots. In fairness to him, he inherited a complete mess in relation to planning, and it falls to him to try to sort it out.

[John Redwood]

Why did the people of the north-east turn down Labour’s policy of elected regional government, and why did Labour not try it anywhere else?

[Lisa Nandy]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could ask the Secretary of State that question, because it was his then policy adviser who led the campaign against it.

In all fairness to the Secretary of State, we were relieved to see the back of a planning framework that seemed to be based on a traffic light system. Our communities deserved far better than that. However, this Bill, as he has heard from colleagues on both sides of the House, allows neighbourhood plans to be overridden when they conflict with a national development management plan. The Secretary of State can make one of those plans at any time—without consultation if he chooses, and without any approval from a single Member of this House—and he can override people in any one of our communities if their plan conflicts with his to any extent. That is not being serious about handing power to local communities, is it?

The press release that accompanied the Bill said that the big idea behind handing power to local communities—notwithstanding that the Bill includes measures that allow Whitehall to override them—is something that the Secretary of State calls “street votes”. Will he explain exactly what those street votes will do to put power in people’s hands and put them in the driving seat of their own communities? The reason I ask is that, if he has a plan, it is not, unfortunately, in the Bill. How is it possible that that flagship idea, which headlined the press release, has not yet been written? Does he not accept that we are entitled to better than plans drawn up on the back of an envelope after horse-trading has taken place, usually to his detriment, behind closed doors in Whitehall?

The Secretary of State says that he wants beautiful communities that work for people, and I agree with him, but that means that we have to put power back into people’s hands, because people who have a stake in their own communities and who have skin in the game will do more, try harder, work for longer and be more creative in order to build thriving communities. It also means that we have to end the system where people can come to our communities and extract from them, taking our wealth, running down our housing and sitting on our land.

Surely the most basic plank of all this is that people have the right to know who owns their town, village or city. However, the measures in the Bill that try to ensure that more information is collected about land ownership also allow the Secretary of State to withhold that information from communities. Why on earth would a Secretary of State want to deny people in our villages, towns and cities the right to know who owns the housing, land, shopping centres and town centres that make up those beautiful places that we call home? I remind him that it was that great Conservative—also a great radical—John Ruskin who said:

“Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”

The commitment to beauty in this Bill is not true.

We need a serious plan to tilt the balance of power back in favour of the people who built this country and will do so again, who have stake in the outcome and skin in the game. We have debated the problems they face many times in this Chamber—

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[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

In Wokingham, there are thousands of permissions outstanding to build new homes, and thousands of new homes have been built in recent years. We do not need or want Government inspectors determining in favour of yet more homes on greenfield sites that are outside our local plan area.

I am pleased with the anger among Conservative Members about the disgrace that is the abuse of the planning system by some large development companies and rich landowners, who manage to game the system to get extra permissions and make money out of the granting of the permission while houses go unbuilt under the legitimate permissions that have been granted. I understand that the Government agree with us, so where is the new direction to the planning inspectors to say that the Government will no longer put up with that? If a statutory instrument is needed to make that clear in law, where is the statutory instrument? As the Government have now brought forward a Bill about planning law in general, can we have a clause in the Bill that nails the issue? I do not know anyone who defends the gaming of the system in that way by rich development companies—I do not think the Labour party defends it. The Government should nail it, so please let us see the draft clause.

The Secretary of State did not answer my polite inquiry—perhaps it was too polite—about what will be done to ensure that local communities have more say and influence over how we define and calculate housing need and over the housing numbers that we think are appropriate and feasible for our area. Surely they have a right to a say in that and may have something useful to contribute to the discussion.

Infrastructure is crucial in this argument. In places such as Wokingham and West Berkshire, where I have the privilege to represent many of the people, we have seen a huge increase in development—some granted on appeal against our wishes—but no proper extra provision for infrastructure. Planners must understand that we cannot suddenly conjure up new broadband, sufficient water supply, enough cable to take the extra electricity that is required, the extra road space needed for all the extra cars, or the extra primary schools and surgeries that will be needed to cater for people.

In an area that has been subject to very fast development, as mine has, there is no excess capacity in the private sector services or the public services that are crucial to a good quality of life. It is embarrassing if planning inspectors grant permissions to build more homes and there then has to be a scramble to put in a cable big enough to take the extra power and to find private companies to organise some broadband, and of course there are the usual family arguments in the NHS and the education system to get the quite lumpy investments that are needed. All those things need to happen before the houses are opened up for people; we should not invite people into new homes that they have bought in good faith only for them to discover those pitfalls and difficulties in the provision of services.

My final point about the Bill is that I am proud to belong to a party that opposed unelected and elected regional government, and we won the argument about elected regional government in England. I would like Ministers to talk more about England, because a number of Cabinet Ministers and senior Ministers are basically England-only Ministers in practically all they do. I trust them to make some of the big calls, as long as they listen to me and my local community. We do not need regional government interjected between us and the Ministers who actually have the power and the money. Let them talk England and forget regional.