Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Lords Chamber

Those are the technical reasons why I support this amendment. I do so in the knowledge that this is very much in line with what the Government are trying to do in terms of deregulation. I respect that and well understand that there has been a general tide of tittle-tattle about the length of time planning decisions take and the somewhat petty conditions that are sometimes attached. However, we must not lose sight of the big picture, which is how local planning authorities have managed to protect our townscapes and built environment in a way that people in other countries would die for. As I said at the previous stage, they come over here to see how we do it. It is important to protect that, and that is why I support the amendment.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, you have only to go the Republic of Ireland to see that what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has just said is absolutely right. I believe we are well served by our planning laws in this country. I do not want to detain the House for more than a few moments but I remember so often, as a constituency Member of Parliament, finding constituents particularly aggrieved by specific applications. However, there was a way of sorting them out. I also remember the great leylandii problem, when we had to bring in legislation to protect people from these overpowering hedges.

My noble friend Lord True and those who have supported him have laid out an extremely powerful case, backed by technical competence and knowledge from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. If ever there was a case for your Lordships’ House saying to another place, “Think again on this one; you have got it wrong”, this is it.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, my great difficulty with the amendment is that, in the terms in which it has been proposed, what I believe to be a heresy has been expounded, which is there is an equality of rights between ownership and the right to have a say. The fundamental right is that of ownership and the protection of property; that is essential. That is why, when the Quality of Life report looked at this issue, we came up with a way out of the problem with which your Lordships’ House is faced. We said that this kind of issue was a matter not of planning but of neighbourly relations. Why not take it out of the planning system and have a situation in which people could normally do what they wanted, but if neighbours objected the local authority had the right to decide that such an objection was important enough to appoint an arbitrator? It is not a matter of planning most of the time; it is a matter of arbitration between the interests of the owner and those of his neighbours. The arbitrator should work within a context in which the owner would normally be judged as having the right to do what he wanted with his own property, but that if the neighbour’s rights were so intruded upon the arbitrator could make the decision that in this case it could not be done.

My problem with this situation is that the amendment reinforces the concept that through the blooming local authority is the only way in which the locality can have its say. I am not sure I believe that about local authorities; indeed it seems to me to be one of the issues. Localism is not “local authorityism”—it is localism. I note that very often those who speak about these issues talk as though the only way in which the locality can express itself is through the local authority. Frankly, I have seen far too much of local authorities’ fiddling powers, as they try to tell people the best way to do their developments. I remember having an argument with a charming lady on the subject of what sort of window Teulon would have put in a house that Teulon had built. The difficulty was that she was from the authority and I knew about Teulon, which is a difficult situation to be in. I recognise that there are problems of this kind.

I say to the Minister that it is not possible to support this amendment because we are still in this difficult area. I share the assessment of my noble friend Lord True of the Minister’s ability and her heart in these circumstances, so I say this delicately. She has not been enabled to give the House the kind of way through that exists—a balanced way, given by the recommendations of the Quality of Life report. Can she explain why the Government seem not to have taken that moderate path but have moved to this one? On balance, this one is better than the amendment but it has the great difficulty that if there are many cases of the sort feared by my noble friend Lord True, we will be back here legislating to put the thing back. It is a worry. Can she explain why, on this occasion and, I am afraid, all too regularly, the Government have not sought to find a way that might ameliorate the problem and lead more of us more happily through their Lobby?