Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I support my noble friend and the noble Baroness in this amendment. It is something that I personally feel strongly about. I live near Birmingham in the West Midlands and I use the tolled section of the motorway quite frequently on my journeys north. It is a very convenient way of missing the congestion that can be found around spaghetti junction and the Ray Hall viaduct, the elevated section of the M6—until one reaches the toll booths, where we have this medieval concept of queuing to pay, the sort of thing one did with a horse and cart centuries ago. Invariably, I find myself behind someone who has got in the wrong lane, or someone who does not have the right money or cannot find their credit card, and a lot of the time saved by using the toll road is lost as one queues to get through this barrier. Surely there has to be a better way.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said, in this day and age it should surely be possible to have a more modern system of collecting revenue for toll roads. It is 25 years since I first went to Singapore. The authorities there managed to collect congestion charges electronically three decades ago in a way that is apparently beyond us on the Midlands motorway. I ask the Minister to bear that in mind.

Perhaps I may test the patience of the Committee for two or three more minutes while I am on this hobby-horse of the Midlands motorway. At the moment it is comparatively lorry-free because the private owners—I understand that Macquarie, the Australian company, is the main shareholder in the Midlands motorway—deliberately, as a matter of policy, price off heavy goods vehicles. Those heavy goods vehicles then use the existing M6 over the elevated section at the Ray Hall viaduct and past spaghetti junction—a section of the M6 that is regularly and expensively under repair because of those very same heavy goods vehicles which, whatever the very effective road lobby says, do not pay their true track costs and do enormous damage.

Thanks to the generosity of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister in the 1980s, Macquarie was given the concession to run the Midlands motorway in perpetuity, and can charge what it likes. The last thing it wants is a non-stop procession of heavy goods vehicles, because that damages its motorway. It is no accident that the bit of motorway infrastructure regularly under repair anywhere in the country is the left-hand lane, because that is the one used by heavy goods vehicles. It is a nonsensical situation in which the British taxpayer has paid literally hundreds of millions of pounds. I know the Ray Hall viaduct quite well; it was in my former constituency of West Bromwich East. When the former Prime Minister John Major talked about the cones hotline he had the Ray Hall viaduct and the spaghetti junction interchange in mind. Miles of it are regularly coned off because of the damage done by heavy goods vehicles, which use that section of the M6 because they are deliberately priced off the Midlands motorway.

There are two matters here that I hope the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will address. The first is the nonsensical and medieval concept of stopping to pay a toll, having used a road on which I must confess to breaking the speed limit occasionally myself. I have rarely if ever seen a police vehicle on that privately-owned section of motorway, although having said that I have no doubt I can expect to see one in the very near future. The taxpayer had to pay literally hundreds of millions of pounds because of the pricing policy on that section of toll road, which keeps off heavy goods vehicles. Both of those matters are complete nonsense. No one blames the Minister personally, but can he do anything about it?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I wish my noble friend Lord Snape well in his quest to abolish all medieval practices in this country. I would simply point out that your Lordships may be the first victims of such a policy, so I hope he does not progress too fast.

[Lord Snape]

If my noble friend will allow me to say so, at least some of us in this House have occasionally sought election.

[Lord Adonis]

Of course, in medieval times exit was not a permitted right. The issue here is a very simple and straightforward one, on which I hope the noble Lord can give the Committee comfort. It is as simple as whether it is possible to have a tolling regime without having to have toll booths. The reason the issue has come to the fore is the Silvertown tunnel proposal. TfL, quite rightly, does not want to have toll booths, but the legal position is unclear. TfL tells me the issue is whether the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 or the Greater London Authority Act is the relevant legal basis for tolling. If it is the one, then there is not a need for booths; if it is the other, then there might be. I think we all agree on what the public policy objective is here; we simply need the Government to give us comfort that it can be achieved.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for tabling this amendment and for raising this issue in the House. Of course, it is always a pleasure to listen to noble Lords when they get on their hobby-horses. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Snape, will be here on Thursday afternoon to discuss the HGV Road User Levy Bill that I will propose to the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, makes a persuasive case in favour of amending Section 144(3) of the Planning Act 2008 in order to provide greater flexibility for developers wishing to include road charging provisions within the development consent order and to remove unnecessary additional processes and restrictions from the major infrastructure regime. While I cannot comment on the detail of individual cases, I share his commitment to ensuring the delivery of the crucial infrastructure that this country needs to support vital growth and jobs. I also agree with him that it is important that we take the opportunity to ensure that the provisions of the Planning Act 2008 are fit for purpose and are not inadvertently acting as a barrier to growth. This is therefore an area where I am able to consider further the case for an amendment to Section 144(3) of the Planning Act 2008.

On the noble Lord’s point about charges against diplomatic organisations, he will be aware that this is a long-running issue that we have debated many times. The Government pursue these charges vigorously with the organisations concerned. The noble Lord touched on the charging of road users, and of course on Thursday we will debate the HGV Road User Levy Bill, which partially addresses some of these problems.

I am happy to meet all noble Lords to discuss some of the wider issues relating to charging for roads. However, noble Lords will be well aware of the Government’s policy on wider road-user charging. With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment and perhaps return to it on Report.

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It is a narrow point, but if this clause is to be effective, as I hope my noble friends in government expect it to be, this modest improvement in the situation would help the Government’s intention. I hope that Ministers feel able to agree to that. What Mr Boles said on that occasion absolutely reflects what is right, and this amendment is necessary to give effect to that.

[Lord Adonis]

Noble Lords have different views about the precise scope of the special parliamentary procedure, which we have heard expressed in Committee, but it is important that the scope is consistently applied. It is therefore important that the Minister answers the point made by my noble friend Lord Faulkner. Why does Clause 22(5) preserve the application of the SP procedure to proposed compulsory purchase acquisition of National Trust land, which is held inalienably, but not provide equivalent protection for land held in trust for the nation by the Canal & River Trust? Since the land is held for precisely the same purpose in both cases, why should the same legal procedure not apply to both?

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I support the amendments and the stand part debate proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, and express some concern about the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

We are talking about open space. The law relating to open space is quite complex and is nothing like as simple as might be suggested. The problem is that a little bit of this particular Bill intervenes on the law on open space in one or two instances, potentially causing considerable confusion, not least about the definition of “open space”. In Clause 22 is set out the proposal that in some circumstances where it is proposed to develop on and remove open space—it does not refer to commons; the position on commons will remain the same—the special parliamentary procedure will not apply. Those circumstances are when,

“it is strongly in the public interest for the development for which the order grants consent to be capable of being begun sooner than is likely to be possible if the order were to be subject (to any extent) to special parliamentary procedure”.

It is an important bit to read out. The crucial words are,

“it is strongly in the public interest”.

That decision will have to be made by the Secretary of State, which is why what the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said about the threat of a relatively large number of delaying judicial reviews is so crucial. What is and is not in the public interest is clearly debatable, and the question of whether the Secretary of State is making a reasonable judgment on what is in the public interest is clearly judicially reviewable. That is the constraint in here which means that it is poor legislation; it is vague and not very clear about what it means. It might mean different things in identical circumstances to different Secretaries of State.

There are other reasons why Clause 22 is undesirable. As the noble Lord said, there have been very few references to or uses of special parliamentary procedure. Once again in this Bill, the Government come forward wanting to do something without providing any clear evidence of why it is necessary. The first thing that the Minister has to try to do is to give us some evidence of why this is necessary in the real world, not of why, in some theoretical future, there might be a problem or two, but evidence that it has been a serious problem in the past. If it has been only in one or two cases, then that does not add up.

The other rather vague and, I believe, judicially reviewable phrase is “long-lived”. These new provisions apply to circumstances in which the removal of the open space is temporary but possibly long-lived. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what “long-lived” means. I suspect that she cannot tell us very precisely because, again, it is a matter of judgment, and it may lead to more delays than even a special parliamentary procedure.

Has the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoken to his amendments? He has not. I thought that perhaps I had been asleep and had missed him when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, jumped in. I will speak to them, with his permission, and then he can tell me why I am wrong.

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Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

77ZJ: Clause 24, page 29, line 32, after “may” insert “, subject to regulations excluding sites of special environmental or historic importance,”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I will speak to the six amendments in this group standing in my name. The question before us is what projects should be considered nationally significant and therefore subject to the Planning Act 2008, as amended in this Bill, and therefore subject to a national rather than a local planning consent regime. The 2008 Act permits this change to projects of national significance in respect of infrastructure. Clause 24 extends this to business and commercial schemes.

The thrust of my amendments is that Parliament should not give the Secretary of State such wide-ranging powers without defining their extent carefully in the Bill. In the Bill, discretion as to what constitutes national significance is left almost entirely to the Secretary of State. The only substantial limitation is that regulations may not encompass projects that include residential dwellings. My amendments are all probing and I look forward to the Minister’s response to the substantial points underlying each.

Amendment 77ZJ would exclude from the new arrangements sites of special environmental or historic importance. Amendment 77AB would exclude developments that involve surface mineral extraction or quarrying. Such applications arouse especially strong local feeling, and to circumvent local planning entirely for such schemes is bound to give rise to acute concern. Amendments 77AA, 77AC and 77BA would remove the Secretary of State’s discretion to define what is meant by business or commercial and to permit the bypassing of a local authority, because Amendment 77ZA and other amendments in my name specify the definition in the Bill.

Amendment 77ZA seeks to define business and commercial projects of national significance, rather than leaving it entirely to the discretion of the Secretary of State. Under my amendments, these projects could be subject to the national process only if they are in specific areas—largely those set out in annexe A of the Government’s consultation on what should constitute nationally significant infrastructure projects in the business and commercial sphere.

That leads me to the Government’s consultation on those projects. The Government will no doubt respond to my amendment by saying that they have consulted both on categories of development and on thresholds within those categories in terms of the number of square metres that might apply in determining whether a commercial or business development application is of national significance. Last week, the Government published their analysis of the responses. However, they have not yet said how they intend to proceed. A key issue for us in this debate is to know what the Government’s response will be to the consultation that they carried out on types of development and thresholds. I will welcome the Minister’s response to the question of what the Government intend to do in respect of the types of development and thresholds set out in annexe A of the consultation. If the Minister is not able to give me a response now, I would be very grateful if he would write to noble Lords before Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 78 in this group, which is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. It is yet another attempt to change the definition of what type of project could be included in the extent of the Planning Act. It relates to commercial and business developments that require consent under the national significant infrastructure regime.

The issue that I would like to raise is that of mixed-use schemes that have some housing or retail element. They should be able to take advantage of the regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects. Any retail element is excluded from the proposed list of development types set out in annexe A of the recent CLG consultation on extending the Planning Act regime. I imagine that this could always be reversed if the Government were minded to do so, but the Bill prevents any housing element being included in regulations.

I believe there is a large number of potentially significant business and commercial developments that will have some retail and certainly some housing element in them, even if it is only a caretaker. In theory, if there is just one property in a development, it cannot qualify for going down the nationally significant route. It is important for such developments to be able to include some housing element and to go for the nationally significant approach. An awful lot of time and cost could be saved if this were possible. The original prohibition of housing was well intentioned, and clearly big housing projects are not what the nationally significant definition is for, but it is a problem because if there were just one or two houses in a big development, it would be excluded.

That is what this probing amendment seeks to achieve. I hope that the Minister is willing to look at this again. Perhaps we can discuss whether there is some better wording that could be applied on Report.

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[Baroness Hanham]

I understood that that was what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was getting at. I have committed to giving him the summary of the responses and have been told that the Government’s response will come in due course. That does not sound to me as if it will come before Report, but if it does, I will let noble Lords know that it is coming.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raises a point of some substance. I have read the summary of responses which the noble Baroness very kindly sent to me a short while ago. It is supremely uninformative. Question 3 asks:

“Do you agree with our assessment of the factors that the Secretary of State would need to take into account when considering whether a project is nationally significant?”.

The summary of responses says:

“A number of respondents thought the assessment factors were broadly right whilst others commented that they were not detailed enough or were not supported at all”.

I could go through them, but it is a profound exercise in waffle and does not really help us very much. To be fair to the Government, in annexe A of their consultation paper, they set out both specific types of development and very specific criteria in terms of the square metreage for the thresholds that would need to be met before these projects are deemed to be of national significance. That is crucial in informing our view as to whether we think this clause should proceed without requiring further limitation, although I think there is quite a strong preference for seeking to put provisions in the Bill. It would be extremely helpful if the noble Baroness were able, before Report, to indicate whether the Government stick by their proposals in annexe A or are minded to amend them in any form. If that does not come before Report, we will of course have no chance to assess the Government’s intended course of action before this Bill becomes law.

[Baroness Hanham]

My instinct would say that if it is there, then the Government are going to introduce it and are probably not going to amend it. If there is any change to that, I will let the noble Lord and the Committee know.

[Lord Adonis]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 77ZJ withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

77ZK: Clause 24, page 29, line 35, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State must publish his reasons for giving a direction under this section.”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the amendment standing in my name in this group is very simple. It would require the Secretary of State to publish the reason that a planning decision is to be made centrally, including why the application is regarded as nationally significant. This is a simple case of transparency and accountability. If the Secretary of State is to be granted the wide powers contained in this Bill, it is only right that their use should be open to scrutiny case by case. If the local authority is to have its planning role set aside, it seems only fair to tell it why. Just as planning inspectors have to give reasons for their decisions, it seems entirely consistent and transparent that the Secretary of State should have to give reasons for deeming a development proposal to be of national significance. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 77A, 77B and 78A, and to the question of whether Clause 24 should stand part of the Bill, which are down in the Marshalled List in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I am afraid mine will not be quite as swift and simple as the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, because I want to give a pretty full exposition of why Clause 24 should be deleted, or at least amended in a way that would remove the extension of the major infrastructure regime to business and commercial projects.

I am afraid that my subtext will be the same as for previous amendments I have put forward: this is another unnecessary clause in an unnecessary Bill. We still lack evidence of substantial numbers of large-scale projects being delayed under the current system. Using DCLG’s own statistics, local authorities are already determining and approving 87% of relevant, large-scale, major applications that might fall within the categories of Clause 24 within one year, which is the same period as the fast-track timetable that DCLG heralded when the Bill was published. Once again, we urge the Minister to present to the House the evidence for substantial delays or other reasons that would justify Clause 24.

The Minister Nick Boles, when briefing Peers, very kindly indicated that there would be only 10 to 20 applications to the Secretary of State each year under Clause 24. Therefore, one could take the view that it is hardly worth legislating for, especially as this is a centralising proposal that flies in the face of the Government’s commitment to localism. The Secretary of State has call-in powers if necessary. Indeed, if local authorities struggle with some of these larger-scale proposals, the Planning Advisory Service is available to support them. What additional benefits does the Minister believe are provided by the provisions in the clause beyond those already available?

Clause 24 is all the more unsatisfactory because of the point already raised by the noble Lords, Lord Adnois and Lord Greaves, about the consultation on how business and commercial developments will be defined in terms of type and scale. It has only just been completed. I, too, have read the summary of responses and, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, it was not hugely illuminating. Indeed, all the types of development that the consultation proposed would have major local impacts and need to be dealt with by local government. I add my voice to those who already urge the Minister that we see not only the summary of responses, but the Government’s reply and their intentions in terms of the clause, before Report. I ask the Minister to commit to producing the Government response before Report—otherwise we are being asked to buy a pig in a poke.

Of particular concern is that the proposals under Clause 24 also include the extractive industries: deep-mined coal, large onshore gas, oil and other mining and quarrying above certain thresholds. They would be brought within the major infrastructure planning system without robust guarantees that the considerable environmental impacts of these developments can be addressed through the planning system. They are usually dealt with through specific local, national park or county-level policies and procedures governing mineral planning issues. It is also unsatisfactory to propose that deep-mined coal be included in the proposed fast-track process because this seems at odds with the presumption against new coal that is included in the National Planning Policy Framework. It does not say much for commitment to addressing climate change if we regard these types of energy generation as sufficiently important to bypass the normal planning system.

One could say that there might be safeguards for decisions made under the national infrastructure procedure. National policy statements are the main basis on which nationally significant infrastructure projects on energy, transport, water or waste are decided. These have major advantages in that they are scrutinised by Parliament before being agreed. However, we do not yet know as a result of the consultation process whether Ministers will change their minds about formulating national policy statements for business or commercial schemes. The consultation was on the basis that there would be no national policy statements for these schemes, but I see from the consultation response summary that there has been some pressure to develop further national policy statements in these areas. Can the Minister give the House some clarification on the Government’s position on national policy statements for business and commercial schemes, and could we have that clarification before Report?

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I listened with great care to what my noble friend said on the question of who can make an application to the Secretary of State for an NSIP treatment. I will read very carefully what she said but, having listened, I am still puzzled as to why there is a difference between the existing applications and the new ones for business and commercial. Perhaps I might leave that there. I will read very carefully what she said and decide how we should proceed after that.

[Lord Adonis]

On the question of proposed types of development and thresholds, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Young, pressed the Minister, I took the Minister to have made a significant statement earlier when she said that if there was to be a notable departure from the proposals set out in annexe A of the consultation document she thought it likely the Government would come forward and tell the House that before we passed this legislation into law. I am sure we will study carefully in Hansard tomorrow what the noble Baroness said but that was quite a significant statement. We look forward to the noble Baroness coming forward and telling noble Lords of the Government’s intentions if they intend to depart from the proposed types of developments and thresholds set out in annexe A.

Unless I missed it, I do not think that the noble Baroness replied to my amendment at all, which would require the Secretary of State to publish the reasons why a planning decision is to be decided centrally, including why the application is regarded as nationally significant. I thought that was a very reasonable and extremely constructive amendment and that she might even be able to accept it.

[Lord Greaves]

I would like to ask a question that the Minister might want to write to us about in some detail. She mentioned the figure of 13% of, I assume, major applications or perhaps some other kind of big applications that took more than 52 weeks. It would be a help to know whether they were major applications as defined at the moment. That is typical of the very general statistics that the Government give when we ask for evidence. How many of those applications would have gone to be decided at national level under the new system or how many would have been likely to go to that level? How many of the 87% of presumably major applications that were dealt with within 52 weeks would also have gone to national level? If we are expecting only an additional 20 or 25 in the commercial business categories, does that equate to 13% or what does it equate to? Some more detailed figures and statistics on these matters would be extremely helpful. I would also find it extremely helpful to have a list of just five or six applications dealt with in the past year which in future would come to national level, so that I can get my mind round what sort of developments they are and what sort of outcomes there might be.

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[Baroness Hanham]

If I can get what my noble friend requires, I will make sure he and the Committee get that before Report.

[Lord Adonis]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 77ZK withdrawn.