Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Greaves

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Greaves

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I have Amendment 79 in this group. I was going to say how much I support Amendment 79A, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I do not think he spoke to it but I am happy to support him on it.

My amendment is similar to one that I moved when we were talking about Clause 1. Schedule 1 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, among other things, provides that notification of planning applications is given to all town and parish councils within the area of the authority. This amendment would provide the same duty on the Secretary of State to notify town and parish councils when an application for development consent takes place within their area and when a significant amendment is made to it. It is as simple as that. I hope that the Government will be able to accept the amendment, which places in the Town and Country Planning Act the same duty as already applies to local authorities.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, quite rightly points out that I did not speak to my second amendment, which I thought was in the next group. The amendment is designed to request that the local plan would have primacy in the event that the Government refuse to publish a national policy statement. Since it is the only plan which applies in that event, it seems to be perfectly reasonable that it should be the one that has primacy.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I thank everybody who has taken part in this long discussion on this group of amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, described it as disparate; I would call it a bumper bundle. It has been a quite extraordinary debate.

We had an extremely interesting debate on primary schools. I thank particularly my noble friends Lady Williams and Lady Sharp and the right reverend Prelate, who are all more expert in this matter than I am, for taking part. Whether or not the Bill needs changing in any way, it is clear that further discussion on primary schools, small schools and federations is required as it progresses through this Chamber and the Commons. We have sparked off that debate very usefully.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about types of school which could become academies and which the Bill might restrict. I should like to put one pebble in the pond for the longer term, when more public finance might be available than there is now. I am one of those people who went to a direct-grant grammar school, which were quite extraordinary institutions. They were highly elitist academically, but many of them were not all that elitist socially. Approximately half the pupils at my school were fee-payers and the rest were, like me, scholarship pupils. They were paid for by the local authority to attend the school, which had a direct grant from central government. There was therefore quite a social mix. The school that I went to had an extraordinary social mix, because its intake ranged from children from coal-mining villages right through to the sons of the local professional middle classes.

In the 1960s, when there was a big drive towards comprehensive education, there was a general consensus that this system was not logical or sensible—that it was elitist and undermined the comprehensive principle. Direct-grant grammar schools were therefore abolished—I think by the Labour Government at the end of the 1960s.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord does his noble friend Lady Williams a disservice. It was she who abolished them.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Greaves

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, Amendment 3 in this group is tabled in my name. It is similar to the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has just moved. I tabled this amendment because I have read the Bill several times—more times than is good for me—and I cannot work out whether the Government intend to include free schools within this legislation, and this is meant to be the legislation that will apply to free schools, or whether it is just about converting existing schools. My confusion, which is similar to that of the noble Baroness, arises because all the Government’s statements about the Bill relate to converting existing schools into this new kind of academy. That is how the Bill was promoted. I read the Second Reading debate, and that was largely what it was about. So I was confused as to whether Clause 1, in particular subsections (1) and (2), could apply to free schools. The Bill states:

“The Secretary of State may enter into Academy arrangements with any person”.

That seemed to me to provide an ability to include any group of people who put themselves forward to set up a so-called free school.

Then there was the announcement at the weekend and the Statement that we have just had, and it now appears that the Bill includes free schools and that they will be set up within the terms of the Bill, if and when it becomes law. That is the real reason I put this amendment down for clarification. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case? Or do the Government think that free schools can be set up under existing legislation? In that case, they have a choice. If free schools are included in the Bill, a great deal of unanticipated extra discussion and debate is required, particularly in Committee.

I thank the Government and Ministers in both Houses for the amount of discussion they have been prepared to enter into with all Members of the House, and in particular with the Liberal Democrats, concerning the Bill. However, going over the notes I have made of meetings, I see that free schools have hardly been mentioned. The meetings have all been about conversions. Suddenly this weekend, the terms of the debate on the Bill seemed to change substantially. At this stage I do not want to enter into detailed debate about free schools. However, if there are to be free schools, the legislation and rules under which they are set up will need to be laid down at least as clearly as the rules for conversions are set out in the Bill. Given the quantity and detail of the amendments that have been tabled, we may feel that the detailed rules and regulations for conversions are insufficiently set out in the Bill and need improvement.

The system for setting up free schools does not exist in the Bill, as far as I can see, unless there is stuff that I have read without understanding what it means. This amendment is a means of getting from the Minister some clarification of these matters so that, in the rest of this debate in Committee and when the Bill goes back to the House, we can understand exactly what we are talking about. It may be that amendments that noble Lords might want to see in the Bill will be different according to the answer that the Minister gives. The basic questions are: do free schools need new legislation; can they be set up under old legislation so that the Bill does not apply to them; and, is the Bill necessary and fundamental to the setting up of free schools?

[Lord Adonis]

I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that entirely new schools can be set up, and indeed are set up at the moment, as academies. So, to the extent that that is true, free schools can be set up at the moment under existing academy legislation. I warmly welcome the suggestion made by my noble friend Lady Morgan that free schools should be called academies. I hope that the Minister is able to accept that suggestion, which my noble friend makes with great generosity of spirit, to make clear that we have a much more uniform nomenclature available. I am very keen to see all categories of schools that have the legal characteristics of academies called academies.