Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow 11 minutes of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explaining the amendments. I have tabled amendments in this group and supported others because of the potential importance of strategic planning in tackling the climate emergency. We need to embed it in everything that councils do, alongside solving the acute housing crisis in this country.

Mine are probing amendments to find out how the Government see the role of county councils within the production of a joint spatial development strategy. County councils sit one tier above planning authorities, but many have strategic functions—for example, transport, health, social care or education. It seems slightly odd that they do not have a planning role as well.

Schedule 7 as currently drafted would need participating planning authorities to consult the county council once a draft strategy has been produced. It seems to me that this perhaps misses the opportunity to involve county councils actively in the development of the strategy, which I think they could very much contribute to. Taken to its highest level, the county council could even initiate the process and convene the planning authorities to work together. It seems to me that that is likely to happen anyway.

I would like to know the Minister’s thinking on how the Government see the role of county councils in strategic planning and whether they might explore the opportunity of more fully involving counties in spatial development plans.

For most Bills, the more I get involved the more fascinating they become. This Bill is an example of that not working at all. I am finding it incredibly difficult, and I sympathise with the Minister dealing with it. It is very difficult to find a coherent thread through this whole Bill. I applaud her and the Labour Front Bench for toughing it out.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder if my noble friend would accept that it sounds a bit odd to those of us who live in the countryside that counties should be left out. I know why it was; I can see the civil servant saying to her, “Well, you know, counties don’t have planning powers, except for minerals, so it really doesn’t count here. It’s the district councils that have it”. I know what they have said; they would have said it to me all those years ago—that is what they would do. I say to my noble friend that I will not easily be dissuaded from the fact that the county council is crucially important if you go in for spatial planning. I do not see how you do it otherwise.

Take the planning authority for Ipswich. Several of the housing developments and industrial sites that anybody else would have thought were in Ipswich are not; they are outside it, in another district council. The county council has to provide many of the services that service the whole group. If the county council is excluded from this, it is not just a bit odd but it will not work—the county council is crucial.

The second reason why I ask my noble friend to look again is a simple matter. We had the welcome announcement of a new relationship between national and local government. I am distressed by the way that national government often treats local government as if it is a sort of incubus, and I am afraid that civil servants often have a view of local government officers which is other than entirely polite. They say, “Better not, Minister—you never know what they might they do. Therefore, don’t give them any powers without us being able to pull them back.” I am afraid that is the view of many of the civil servants who serviced Ministers and continue to do so, so I want to break into that.

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I thank my noble friend Lord Deben for supporting this. I reassure him that, through the Bill, the rural county areas will now have the opportunity to have powers similar to those of Manchester and the West Midlands, as they can go forward to a county combined authority—CCA.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My noble friend has just said how much she wants the counties to be involved, but why can they not just be part of it? I do not understand this—it seems that there is no reason for it, except that it is in the Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I disagree. The district councils, about which we have been hearing, are the planning authorities in those areas, and the county council is not. So it is important that we make sure that this is district-led but that the county has the important role of statutory consultee. But that will be different in different counties, depending on whether they are unitary authorities; in which case, they will of course be the planning authority and therefore can lead on this spatial strategy.

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[Lord Deben (Con)]

The county authority is the mineral planning authority, so how can we talk about spatial planning if we exclude the things for which the county authority is a planning authority. Making the distinction between being consulted—having a consultant role—and being part of the decision-making seems to me to be a false distinction. As the planning authority for minerals and similar things, it has to be part of such a spatial plan. I just do not understand the distinction.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not think that there is a distinction. They can be, and will be, part of it. I am sure that they will be part of whether that particular geographic area or group of councils will decide to go to a spatial strategy in the first place—that is how local government works. But I will give it some more thought; I am sure that we will come back to the issue on Report.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to support every word that the noble Viscount has just said—a rare event.

I have recently joined a group of people who meet monthly to assess the health of the chalk stream that runs through their village by counting river flies, and the experience has been a real pleasure. There is nothing as satisfying as seeing a healthy ecosystem, and luckily theirs is.

However, as the noble Viscount has pointed out, chalk streams are extremely vulnerable. In fact, the amendment should not be necessary at all because we should automatically be protecting the health and well-being of our chalk streams. So I very much support the amendment. I hope it comes back again and again and we vote on it—or perhaps the Minister will snap it up as a good thing to do.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I too am not always in agreement with the words of my noble friend, but I strongly support the amendment.

The key point is that chalk streams are more vulnerable than almost any other water because they are concentrated in areas of considerable development and they are subject to considerable abstraction and the results of sewage disposal. There is therefore a particular reason for isolating them as opposed to other things.

The crucial reason is that we are fortunate enough to have the majority of the chalk streams in the world. Britain needs to be very careful about protecting those few things that we have almost uniquely. I have to say to the Government that, awful though the REUL Bill is, this subject is clearly not going to be part of it, so this is an ideal opportunity to make that statement.

I fear that I know precisely what the civil servants will have said to the Minister. First, they will have said: “First of all, we really need a wider range of things here. We need to apply this much more carefully because otherwise people who will not be covered by this will object”. Secondly, they will have said: “It’s very difficult to isolate chalk streams when we are not covering this, that and the other”. Thirdly: “There will be other opportunities to do this in other legislation”. Fourthly: “This is a very big Bill already and we don’t want to burden the system with anything more”. Fifthly: “This particular amendment doesn’t cover all the chalk streams that ought to be covered, and therefore it would be better to wait until we can cover them all”.

There may be other things that civil servants will have told my noble friend, but I suspect that those are the first five. I suggest to him that this is the moment in which he does not listen to, “Better not, Minister”, and puts in, instead of that, “Be off, civil servant!” We need to have this. It is not perfect, but if we wait for perfection, we will do nothing. I just hope that the Minister, in whom I have great confidence, will be able to say, “This is a sensible thing to do and I can’t really think of any good reason for not doing it”—and therefore will do it.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I join all those who have supported my noble friend’s amendment. I think that if my noble friend the Minister were sitting on the Back Benches he would probably have added his name. We know he has a difficult task but we wish him well in his endeavours.

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Therefore, with these assurances about the scope of the definitions and the opportunity for further scrutiny of outcomes, I hope that the noble Viscount will feel able to withdraw his amendment, but with the absolutely clear commitment from me that further conversations will be had, with him and others, about chalk-stream restoration and how we can better make sure that this continues to be a priority.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am sure that my noble friend’s comments are absolutely acceptable and I see perfectly well why he does not want this here. But is it possible just to consider whether attention might be drawn to this point somewhere else in the Bill? As he said, it is very special; I say this with a perfect lack of interest because, coming from the flatlands of Suffolk—where I am afraid we do not have any chalk streams—I am particularly keen to support the noble Viscount. Might the Minister consider putting this somewhere else in the meantime?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will have to have discussions with colleagues and officials to see whether there are other areas of legislation, or areas in this legislation, where we could reassure the House. I have listened and will continue to listen on this, and I hope that noble Lords will reflect on this.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as an honorary fellow of the RIBA. I support this amendment because I think there is a huge need for people to know where they are. It is very simple but there is so much of this in government—and probably elsewhere—that people find it very hard to understand and react properly because they do not know where they are. In the planning system, this is particularly notable.

As my noble friend Lord Lansley made his speech, it all sounded so obvious and natural. It is exactly what we should do. Therefore, we know what the Government’s answer will be: “We will do that, so we do not need to put it into the Bill”. I am afraid I am becoming less and less willing to accept the promises of Ministers based on simply saying they will do something. We recently had a very good example of this. I thought we understood that we were not going to make deleterious environmental decisions in any legislation at all because we could trust Ministers not to do that. It is very debatable that that is now being maintained.

I say to the Minister that if it is something we do anyway, there is no harm in putting it in the Bill. If the Government object to something because they do not do it, then they should explain that they do not do it. However, if the argument is that the Government already do it and therefore do not need to put it in the Bill, I do not think the House should accept it any more. If the Government feel unhappy with that, I suggest that they remember they are not necessarily going to be the Government permanently. Therefore, when they are thinking deleteriously of those who might replace them, surely they would want to ensure that were they to be replaced, the new Government would have to accept the same rules. I do not think they need to feel unhappy; rather, they should say they are ensuring that the system works for everybody, whoever may be running it. It is also a good thing for a Government to recognise that people really want to know where they are, and this is one of the areas where we do not.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has raised a very important point about the effectiveness of a plan-led system if local plans are not up to date. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, has enhanced that argument by saying that people need to know where they are. If this is only in guidance, but we require there to be local plans—as we do in a plan-led system—why is it not incorporated in statute? I hope the Minister will answer this question.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has raised a fundamental issue. Local plans are at the very heart of a plan-led system. As well as setting out local planning policies, the local plan allocates land for new housing developments; it allocates land for business development, thereby allocating land for jobs; and it allocates land to be protected, such as the green-belt land allocation.

If local authorities are not preparing, or do not have, an up-to-date local plan, then land is not being allocated for development. We will later have debates about housing targets, but one of my concerns about housing targets is that, if local authorities do not have an up to date local plan, land is not being allocated or set aside for housing development. If land is not being set aside for housing development, it is very likely that new houses are not going to be built.

The government website helpfully has an alphabetical list of authorities and the status of their local plans—although it is unhelpful in being able to look at them more carefully. The vast majority do not have an up-to-date local plan. In fact, one or two on the list do not appear to have updated their local plan for several years. What that tells me is that, currently, the expectation is that local authorities will develop a local plan and have it agreed, with a full review after five years. Helpfully, my own authority is not one of those that does not have an up-to-date plan, and it is currently beginning a review a year ahead of expectation.

If land is not allocated for housing, how on earth do we expect housebuilding to take place? I hope the Minister will be able to help me with this, because some time ago in a previous debate on this, I thought I recalled the Minister stating that a five-year supply of land will no longer be a requirement and will be waived by the Government. As I understand it, at the moment that is the only stick to encourage—or force, even—local authorities to allocate land for housing in a local plan. Currently, although it may be waived—and I am waiting for the Minister to respond to that—as I understand it, if a local authority does not have a sufficient supply of land for a five-year allocation according to government housing targets, then developers can choose where to develop. It is open season for housebuilding. If that one stick is being waived—and I hope I have remembered that correctly—then I would like to hear from the Minister on how they will encourage local authorities to have up-to-date plans, because without them, I do not see how we will meet housebuilding targets.

The issues that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised, are fundamental. When he replies, will he say whether he wishes to test the opinion of the House on this? Without an up-to-date plan, all the Government’s housing targets approach—which my party does not necessarily agree with—comes to nothing. Only the authorities that do the right thing, having difficult discussions with communities about allocating land for housing and other development, will supply the houses that need to be built. Everyone across parties accepts the importance of building more houses; how we get there is the issue. However, I would love to hear from the Minister how that will be enforced without an up-to-date local plan. If the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in responding wishes to push this further, we will support him.

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[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, I too rise to support Amendment 190, to which I have added my name. Your Lordships will be delighted to know that I do not have to speak for very long as everything I was going to say has already been said. The House sounds as though it is unanimous in the view: that there needs to be some sort of constraint on the proposal in this clause, to ensure that there is consultation; that local communities should have primacy in deciding what happens in their area; and that the policy that general consultation should be in the hands of Secretary of State, without the definition of what that consultation should be, is one that no parliamentary assembly should readily accept.

I believe there is a principle in this amendment, that we can trust my noble friend the Minister, and we can probably trust my noble friend the Secretary of State in the other place; but, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, they will change. They will inevitably change. They may change for the better or for the worse; we do not know. But one thing is certain: if you give a power to centralise decision-taking, sooner or later that power will be abused. It is essential to make sure that we do not pass legislation in this House that allows the abuse of power—particularly, the forcing on to local communities of policies that they reject themselves.

It may well be—indeed, I think there is considerable evidence—that our planning laws do not work; we need only look at the problems over the environment, housing and so on. We should absolutely be looking at how our planning laws should be changed and how we should free up, speed up and make less expensive the whole planning process. But the way to do that is not by giving powers to the Secretary of State to override any consultation, any local decision-making and, indeed, the local power of other constitutionally established bodies such as local government.

I support the amendment for a lot of reasons. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree that this issue needs greater clarification, that it needs to be properly addressed, that this amendment almost certainly achieves all of that, and that, possibly with a few tweaks from the Government, this amendment could form part of the Bill to everybody’s benefit.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, some issues continue to affect almost everything we do. One is the principle of subsidiarity—that we should ensure that we do not have a system where all power is centred at the top. That was a very important principle that the Popes upheld when dealing with both the Nazis and the communists, saying that both got rid of all the subsidiarity powers and concentrated them at the centre. Of course those people did so because they were, largely, wicked. The trouble is when it is done by people who think it is the best way forward, and that is what I fear here.

The planning system is obviously not good enough. I declare an interest here, having spent almost a whole year trying to turn a house back into the pub that it was before. You would have thought they would have been keen on all that but, my goodness, there are many complications in trying to do it. However, although we recognise this about the planning system, you do not overcome it by putting on top of that system something that is seen by others as being dictatorial. Unless this power is clearly controlled and confined by the parliamentary procedures that enable it to be used in a way that the public will see is subject to democratic control, then I believe it will fail. It is not just a question of it not being suitable, and it is not just a philosophical question; it is that it will not actually work.

One knows what Ministers have been advised to say: the amendment would make the process more difficult, slower and more complex. Well, sometimes doing things more slowly is a good thing because it gives you time to make sure that you get it right. Sometimes making it more complex is necessary because the issue is more complex, and pretending that it is not means that you make a mistake.

I come back to a question that is particularly affecting me at the moment. We have now seen a number of examples where Ministers have said, “It’s not necessary to do this because we’re going to do it anyway”. I remember Ministers who promised us that we would not sign contracts with other nations that undermined our farmers, but we have done precisely that. We have a case at the moment where Ministers said there would be no diminution of environmental protection and therefore we did not need to put it in the Act, but I fear that is precisely what has happened.

I am in the same position here. I am sure that Ministers intend to do the right thing, and I am sure that Ministers coming from any reasonable party might intend to do so, but, as a former Minister of 16 years, I think it was very good for me to have to do the right thing. That is what I think we ought to put here.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this policy proposal is one of the most contentious issues that we have debated throughout the course of the Bill. So far, it has been a very thoughtful and considered debate about the importance or otherwise of having a centralised group of planning policies imposed on local authorities.

This approach, of having a set of national policies that are imposed on local planning authorities, is not new and does not have a happy history. Even from before my time in local government, some will remember the imposition of county structure plans. Local authorities had to agree to those plans and abide by what was stated in them. That did not end very well. Then in 2004 there was the introduction of regional spatial strategies—this just goes to show that all parties in government have a tendency to centralise—which I remember debating, and they did not end well either. My serious point is that these are messages from history for the Minister and the Government showing that, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has said, trying to impose on local communities the Government’s idea of national policies that must be adhered to does not have a happy history.

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I shall just quote some figures on this. They are open to interpretation, but one set I saw calculated that the EU is planning to spend over 10 years the equivalent of $440 billion in public spending. In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act accounts for $336 billion. This is a modest amendment, a “draw up a plan, look to see what we could do” amendment. I am going to put this in the framework of time. The EU and the US have already acted. We know that in a year’s time, more or less, one way or another we will have a new Government. I am not even, since I am being emollient, going to make any suggestion about what that new Government might be, but what your Lordships’ House could do, what the Government could do by backing this amendment, is set out a plan directing the Civil Service to look in a strategic way, given the current situation we are in globally, at what the UK could be doing. That could set up the new Government, whatever they look like, to be ready to act. Surely, we need to act, given that we are clearly world trailing on green industrial strategy and we desperately need to catch up.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my past as chairman of the Climate Change Committee merely to say, in very short terms, why I think it is important to take seriously the way in which the planning Acts affect decisions made by the whole nation when it comes to dealing with climate change, both adaptation and mitigation. There is no doubt that we will have to make all our decisions through that lens, because that is the only way we are going to be able to fight the existential threat we now face. No one who has looked at the effects of climate change this year, all over the world, can possibly misunderstand the reality of the threat. If we are going to deal with that, it is not just about policy or programmes but action and delivery.

This Government have been extremely good on their policy and programmes. We cannot complain about a Government who have set the best targets in the world, who led the world in Glasgow, who first set a net-zero target for 2050. We really have to accept that this Government have done all those things, but the criticism is delivery. Doing those things is essential. Setting those targets is crucial. Leading the world in all those ways has been a privilege for all of us, but we now have to deliver. In this amendment there is a real chance to do one of the pieces of delivery which is vital.

I say to my noble friend, with whom I have worked for many years, including in the Department for Environment, when we began the journey to where we have got today, imagine putting the word “not” into Amendment 191:

“The Secretary of State must”


not

“have special regard to the mitigation of, and adaptation to”.

Imagine doing the same in sub-paragraph (2):

“When making a planning decision”,


he must not “have special regard”. We would find that utterly unacceptable, because we know perfectly well that this is central to the future of this country and of the world, and we therefore have to have that. No doubt we will be told that the Government have got that. Well, once again—which is why I intervened earlier, in wicked preparation for this one—it is not good enough just to have the intention. We know which road

“is paved with good intentions”,

and that is not a road we ought to travel, although it is the road down which we are all travelling at this moment. Therefore, I say to my noble friend that I very much hope that he will understand why it is crucial for us to make it clear that the planning system must be used throughout its length and breadth to ensure that we make the decisions upon which the future of our children—and, indeed, ourselves, even those as old as I am—really depends.

I finish by saying this. People attack some of the techniques and ways of behaviour of the extremist organisations, and I join them in that. It is not what I believe in. But what I object to is that people do not ask themselves why they are doing it. It is because there is a whole generation that does not believe that the democratic system can deliver what needs to be delivered on climate change, and we in this House and in the other place have got to overcome that. That is why this amendment is so important as part of reassuring and reasserting that the democratic system can deliver and that you do not have to take to the streets, you do not have to behave in the way that all of us deplore; you have instead to accept this kind of amendment. I hope the Government will see why it is crucial.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene for a moment in support of Amendment 191, to which I have added my name, and to say a couple of things, partly by way of reiteration of what the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said in what I thought was a very capable exposition of the reasoning and purpose behind the amendment.

First, of course we already have in legislation, and have had for some time, a duty in plan making to contribute to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, but I am afraid it is not doing enough. That much is evident, and what the noble Lord said, which is absolutely right, is that some local planning authorities who want to do the most to change their approach to plan making and spatial development in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change are finding that the structure of planning law makes that more difficult.

In resisting the amendment, my noble friends may say that it would lead to litigation. Well, first, it all leads to litigation. Secondly, the problem at the moment is that, for a local planning authority, going down the path of doing the really necessary things to mitigate climate change involves transgressing other objectives under planning law. For example, we can have a big debate about the green belt, but sometimes—as Cambridge’s examination before its local plan process demonstrated—if you really want to make a difference, the structure of development must focus on urban extensions and along public transport corridors—and if you try to do that around London, you hit the green belt. So you have to balance these things.

If we are serious about adaptation to or mitigation of climate change, we must raise it in the hierarchy of considerations—which is exactly what the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, sets out to do. It is not an objection to the amendment that we create a hierarchy that could give rise to challenges; it is its purpose and objective and that is why we should do it.

I will reiterate a second point he made so that noble Lords understand the value of the amendment. It takes a principle presently applied to plan-making and applies it both to the Secretary of State’s policy-making functions, including national development management policies, and to determinations of planning permissions. It puts it right in the midst of the whole structure, from the Secretary of State making policies to local authorities making plans and looking at planning applications and determining them. That is the only way competently to address the range and scale of issues that climate change presents to us. It takes it from policy through to individual decisions, and that is why I think it deserves our support.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

As far as I understand these amendments, they are an intention to return the planning system to the time before 2022 happened—the golden age when the system worked. I must say that I was looking for some fairy dust. I will explain by going back to 2010, when an incoming coalition Government discovered that only 15%—I think it was 15%—of local authorities had an up-to-date local plan. That is when the Department for Communities and Local Government, in which I was then a junior Minister, came up with a way to encourage local planning authorities to speed-up their local plan process.

That was after a 30-year statutory requirement—it is 30 years old—that they should have such a local plan. This was essentially to let developers loose in areas where there was no up-to-date local plan. I have scars from an Adjournment debate in that place, which is a bit like a QSD at this end. As a junior Minister, I drew the always available short straw, and I was faced—or rather I was backed, because they were behind me— by 20, 30, 40, although it seemed like a thousand, angry MPs complaining that the Government were blackmailing their district council by setting developers loose. It was like Dunkirk, only there were no boats.

The coalition Government kept their nerve, and so that system endured until 22 December, I think—the dispatch date given by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. However, whether the coalition Government held their nerve, or whether, like the Conservative Government, they did not hold their nerve, the outcome was still not 300,000 homes a year. The missing ingredient for us was fairy dust. That system does not deliver 300,000 homes a year. I wish the noble Lords good luck with their amendments, and I shall be interested to see what the Government have to say, but even if passed, it will not deliver 300,000 homes a year. That seems to me to be the fundamental point. I absolutely take the analysis delivered so powerfully by the proponents of this. Unfortunately, the lever that they intend us to use for it is already deficient, and we have seen it. So, please, where is the fairy dust?

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my registered interests, particularly that I chair a company that advises people on sustainable planning. I must say to my noble friends, with whom I very often agree, that I find this debate extremely difficult. First, this Bill should never have been in this form at all. No previous Government would have provided a long title for a Bill that means that it takes this long to go through Parliament and that, every time they think of something, they can add it to the Bill. We must be very clear about this Bill. Historically, we used to have the tightness of a title which enabled you to keep responsibly and respectably within the subject. So I start with this difficulty.

Secondly, this concentration on the numbers misses the point. Since the Government got rid of the net-zero requirement for houses, we have built over a million and a half homes that are not fit for the future. Every one of them has meant that the housebuilders have taken the profit, while the cost of putting those homes right has been left with the purchaser of the home. That is a scandal which is shared between the Government, who were foolish enough to get rid of the net-zero requirement, and the housebuilders, who knew precisely what they were doing. One of them made so much money that it offered its chief executive £140 million as a bonus. He did not get all that in the end, but that was the situation.

My problem is that in the absence of a proper policy, we are talking about the wrong thing. We should not be talking about the numbers, except to say that we need significantly more homes. We should be talking about the quality of the homes and the places where they should be. I go back to my own experience as Housing Minister. We were very interested in ensuring that we built homes on already used land. We thought it important to recreate our cities. We thought that was just as important a part of this as the numbers. At the moment, I can drive back from my local railway station and see every little village, every little town, spreading out into the countryside, homes being built on good agricultural land and homes being built which are, by their nature, the creators of commuters, as there is nowhere else for people to work.

If I may say so to my noble friend, it is no good ignoring that many district councils have a real problem with the number of places in which they can build the homes that they were asked to build. A lot are NIMBYs, and some I quite agree you would not like, but if you are faced with building homes in a council where most of the area is green belt, areas of outstanding natural beauty or historic areas, you find yourself in a huge difficulty. I agree that many of them do not try as hard as they ought to, but let us not kid ourselves as to what the local issue is—not just wanting to win that particular ward but a matter of real difficulty.

For that reason, I say to my noble friend that I am sad that in this elongated, extended, overblown Bill, we have not had time to do four things: put in the future homes requirements to raise the standards of housebuilding so that they are fit for the future; create a system whereby housebuilders should provide the resources for rebuilding the insides of many of the homes that they built over the last five or 10 years; and understand that we should reuse land and think about place-making where people are within a quarter of an hour of the resources they need. Then, we can talk about how we can have a relationship with local authorities that can build the number of houses that we need.

I intend to support the Government on this amendment because I am not prepared to be put into a position where the answer to our problems is numbers. That is not the answer. The answer is a housing policy which looks at sustainability, the ability to buy and the future, not a collection of odd clauses stuck together and added when it happens to be convenient.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have a much less eloquent and much less exciting question to the proponents of Amendment 195, and certainly no fairy dust. If you are linking national targets to the local plan, what happens when national targets change during the five-year plan period? Does the plan have to be rewritten, do parts of it have to be rewritten, or do you have to wait until the end of the period and then apply the new target? It is a purely technical question and, as I say, much less exciting than some of the material we have just heard, but I would be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, could help me with that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

As I said, it is a matter of great regret that this debate is taking place before the Select Committee report appears next week. I encourage noble Lords to read it when it appears. I think they will find a great deal of evidence in it that is relevant to what we are discussing today.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, we ought to remember that we are discussing the amendments that the Government have put before us, rather than a committee report that we have not got and which will, no doubt, be of great interest.

We have to recognise that there may well be an issue here that needs properly to be addressed. My concern is that this is not the way to address it. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, suggested that when we deal with the environment, we should consider it very carefully, go out to consultation and make sure that what we are doing is right. None of that has happened here. The Government have put down a whole series of amendments to this Christmas tree of a Bill and some of us are suggesting that we should not do this—although, were they to come forward with something that met the particular problems in a way that was not so manifestly bad, I am sure we would be supportive.

I rather object to the fact that the newspapers say that I am a Conservative rebel. It is the Government who are the rebel here, because they are not being conservative over this. First, they are asking local authorities—I can hardly believe it—to disregard the facts. This is the kind of attitude that we see in the Republican Party in the United States, the people who do not believe in climate change, the anti-vaxxers, who say “Don’t look at the facts”. The second thing that local authorities are being asked to do is encourage ignorance: not only “Don’t look at the facts” but “Don’t look at any evidence or find any evidence—just do what the Government say should be done”.

The argument the Government have put forward is that we need this to build more houses. I was the Secretary of State responsible for that. I had a long history of dealing with the housebuilders, who tell us that this will increase the number of houses. The number of houses built has nothing to do with this at all—it is about whether the housebuilders think that that number will keep the price up at the level at which they have it. The housebuilders are not building the houses they have already got planning permission for in areas which are not in any way affected by this. We know that perfectly well. It is a canard, if I may use a foreign word, to suggest that this will have any effect on the number of houses. The number of houses in this country is not reaching 300,000 because the housebuilders have bought the land at a price which means that they can sell only at a level which is too elevated for the present time, with mortgages as they are. Let us not kid ourselves that, by voting against this, we will in some way reduce the number of houses, because we will not.

I find it extremely difficult when I am told that the housebuilders should not pay for the damage they do. Three arguments are used. First is the housemaid’s argument: it is only a very little bit—“It is only a very little baby”—and therefore we do not have to take it into account. As a former chairman of the Climate Change Committee, I have to say that that is the argument everybody uses every time you want to do anything—“It isn’t me”; “They are bigger than we are”; “Don’t do it in Britain because of China”; “Don’t do it because of the farmers”; “Don’t do it for anyone, but don’t ask me to pay for my pollution”.

Secondly, I thought that the Conservative Party was in favour of the polluter pays. Were my noble friend the Minister canvassing in the Mid Bedfordshire by-election at this moment, would she turn to an elector and say, “In future, housebuilders building in the Wye Valley or near the Monnow will not have to contribute for the cost and the damage they do, but you will through your taxes. You, the Mid Bedfordshire voter in the by-election, will now be asked to subsidise the housebuilders”? That is what these amendments are about—the subsidising of the housebuilders.

In the end, we could go even further. Why do we not have a Bill to say that housebuilders can ignore health and safety arrangements because then more housing would be built? Why do we not say that local authorities must not know what the health and safety laws are and must not investigate what they might be so that houses might be built?

This is one of the worst pieces of legislation I have ever seen, and I have been around a long time. It is entirely unconservative. If all this was so obvious so long ago, why was it not included in the Bill in the first place, or in some other Bill? As we have, in my view, some pretty peculiar legislation on ex-EU laws, why have the Government not used their powers therein?

I sat through debate after debate on how we were going to protect the British people instead of the court in Brussels and on how we would have proper protection against government mishandling of the environment. We were assured that Glenys Stacey and her department would be treated with all the respect that one would have expected. We were told that she would have all the powers necessary for the Government to take her seriously. What have they done? Two pathetic letters, and no statement—this is a judgment that you should make and we will change things because that is why you are there. That means that the British people are now less protected from government mistakes than any country in the rest of Europe. I make no comment about Brexit, but that is where this House and the other place have left the people of Britain.

I do not believe that the Government can do these things and not expect future generations to say, “If they could do that on this issue, what about other things?” They could say that local authorities can ignore this, that and the other and do not need the facts. Indeed, we do not have the facts here—there is no proof about these houses or any of this; it is an assertion by the Secretary of State.

I am not a Conservative rebel—I am a Conservative. Therefore, I am voting for the principle of the polluter pays, for facts and for knowledge, and I am not voting for ignorance and the disregard of facts.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, is not an easy act to follow, but I shall try.

We were lied to in this House. Our Government promised us repeatedly that there would be no lessening of environmental protection at any time. They promised us that and they lied. As a result of Brexit, we are now almost unprotected. Loads of us knew at the time that they were lying.