Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and John Redwood

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Mr John Redwood!

[John Redwood]

I rise, Mr Deputy Speaker, to support—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I sounded shocked because I had not realised you were here at the beginning.

[John Redwood]

I was in at the beginning. I have come because this an important subject and I want to support my colleagues in saying that where land is being compulsorily acquired, the aim should be to ensure that the owner gets the open market value that they would have got had they been a voluntary seller in the private sector market without the distortion of the public sector purchaser. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) indicated, that surely means that if there is hope value in the land, it should be included in the price. It might be possible to take care of hope value with an overage, or it might be that we can express a capital value of the hope value and clean the whole thing up in one go. Either way, it needs to be sorted out, and I hope that will be confirmed by the Minister. I believe that that is the intention.

As to the Opposition argument, I think that sometimes the best is the enemy of the good. We already have 17 pages of additional legislation on compulsory purchase, and if the Opposition thought that something needed fixing or improving, this was their opportunity to table amendments to do so. The new clause is the Government’s best fix for the current legislation. I think we can do it by means of amendment to existing law. We need not redesign the whole thing. A redesign could create added hazards and complexities and bring scope for mistakes.