Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
Main Page: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts“(4A) For section 130 of the Planning Act 2008 (National Trust land) substitute—
“130 National Trust land and nationally significant waterways
(1) This section applies to land—
(a) belonging to the National Trust which is held by the Trust inalienably, or(b) held in perpetual trust by Canal & River Trust under the terms of The Waterways Infrastructure Trust.(2) An order granting development consent is subject to special parliamentary procedure, to the extent that the order authorises the compulsory acquisition of land to which this section applies, if the condition in subsection (3) is met.
(3) The condition is that—
(a) a representation has been made by the National Trust or Canal & River Trust about the application for the order granting development consent before the completion of the examination of the application,(b) the representation contains an objection to the compulsory acquisition of the land, and(c) the objection has not been withdrawn.(4) In this section “held inalienably”, in relation to land belonging to the National Trust, means that the land is inalienable under section 21 of the National Trust Act 1907 (c. cxxxvi) or section 8 of the National Trust Act 1939 (c. lxxxvi).
(5) In this section “the National Trust” means the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty incorporated by the National Trust Act 1907 (c. cxxxvi).
(6) In this section Canal & River Trust means company number 07807276, a company limited by guarantee formed and registered under the Companies Act 2006 (c. 46), acting in its capacity as trustee of The Waterways Infrastructure Trust.
(7) In this section, The Waterways Infrastructure Trust means the charitable trust of that name, settled by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and established by the Trust Settlement made by the Secretary of State on 28th June 2012.””
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 48. These two amendments concern the inland waterways of England and Wales and their position under the new planning regime. They are not concerned with the inland waterways of Scotland or Northern Ireland. I need to begin by apologising to the House for not having participated before in the consideration of the Bill. However, this issue came up only late in the day in the proceedings of this House, and long after the Bill had left the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, raised the issue in outline in Committee on Monday 4 February, reported in col. 51 of Hansard. Subsequently, the Canal & River Trust has been able to address the issue directly in the form of my two amendments. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for having put his name to them. I would also like to put on record my thanks to the Minister and her Bill team for having arranged a meeting in which the CRT was able to explain and discuss the concerns that these two amendments seek to address. With those preliminaries—to horse!
The development of the inland waterways provided a vital link in the progress of the Industrial Revolution in this country. For the first time in those days, before railways and before tarmacadam roads, it became possible to move large quantities of bought material long distances at reasonable cost. It was a truly epochal moment in this country’s history. It is probably not without significance that today we still refer to those who work on the roads with the slang description of “navvies”. We are, in fact, using a phrase that came down from the word “navigators”, the description given to the men who built the canals those many years ago.
This 2,000-mile network of canals—it is said that there are more miles of canal in Birmingham than in Venice—is a fantastic heritage asset. The network contains 2,756 listed structures, 130 scheduled ancient monuments and one world heritage site. After the Church of England and the National Trust, it is the largest owner of listed structures in the country. However, it is much more than just a heritage asset; it is also a huge leisure asset. Thousands of people holiday on canal boats or live on them permanently. Literally millions of our fellow citizens run or cycle along its towpaths. Further, its linear nature, stretching as it does in and through our inner cities, makes it a major environmental asset. Its embankments, culverts and reservoirs provide a habitat for a diverse range of wildlife. Of course there remains some commercial traffic.
Noble Lords will realise from my remarks that the waterways have always had to serve a diverse range of customers and purposes. For many years, the attempts by the British Waterways Board to move forward were affected by another presence: that of Her Majesty’s Treasury. The Treasury kept a beady eye on the British Waterways Board’s assets, seeking wherever possible to collect profits for the Government, or at the very least to ensure that the board was self-funding, including its pension fund liabilities, which, given its long record and historically large workforce, were substantial.
Therefore, the outlook for the waterways was at best mixed when the Government had a flash of inspiration. Beginning under the last Labour Government and completing under the present Administration, the British waterways operations were taken over by a new body: the Canal & River Trust. The heritage assets of the old British Waterways Board—its canals, its towpaths and its associated structures such as bridges and reservoirs—were put into a new charity, the Waterways Infrastructure Trust, which holds them inalienably. Like the assets of the National Trust, they can be sold only with the express permission of the Secretary of State. Any straightforward commercial assets remain outside the charity. In July last year, the holding body, the Canal & River Trust, came into being.
Where, then, is the problem? As we are all aware, water is heavy stuff, so developments close to, alongside or over the canals carry risks. Embankments slip, bridge foundations move and tunnels crack. To date, the waterways’ position has been protected by the British Waterways Board’s status as a statutory body. This gave it access to the special parliamentary procedure of the Planning Act 1947. In the last resort, if an arrangement could not be reached with the developer in question, the board could invoke the SPP procedure, akin to a Private Bill. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has taken part in one of these and can talk far more knowledgably about it than I can. In all the 60 years since 1947, the British Waterways Board never used the SPP procedures, but it was a very useful backstop to ensure that this great national asset was not chipped away at by a series of individual local decisions.
The House will be aware that the statutory bodies protection under the SPP is to disappear under the provisions of this Bill. Further, of course, the new Canal & River Trust is no longer a statutory body, so it is now more vulnerable to attacks on its network. Strangely, while the Government have seen fit to reduce the planning protection for statutory boards and public open spaces, they have continued to provide a special position for the National Trust as laid out in paragraph 96 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill.
There must be a very strong argument that, given the nature of its operations, the Canal & River Trust can properly be described as a waterways national trust. Indeed, the Waterways Infrastructure Trust was created on terms that explicitly replicate the terms on which the National Trust holds land. It should therefore surely be given the same planning permission as the National Trust: no more, no less. That is what Amendments 47 and 48 aim to achieve.
I end with a few final points. Compared with the National Trust, a higher proportion of the Canal & River Trust assets are in urban areas. The waterways, after all, were built to link our industrial centres. They are linear. Both these factors combine to make them particularly vulnerable to development. Secondly, curiously the National Trust already owns one canal, the Wey and Godalming Navigations. This particular canal will continue to have special protection. Why should the rest of the network not be similarly protected? Thirdly, if my noble friend’s Bill team is encouraging her to resist this amendment on the grounds of creating a precedent, she should not worry. Google away as much as you like: there is no body of similar scale and status to the Canal & River Trust to pop up and say, “What about us?”.
Finally, local interest in canals is intense. Indeed, in the bad old days, most of the work of restoring and maintaining canals was done by volunteers at weekends and the holidays. For those who have an interest in this, there is a great BBC2 documentary on the work that was carried out at that time. The Canal & River Trust is building on this enthusiasm with the establishment of nine local partnerships. This is localism in action. We should protect and encourage it wherever we can.
To conclude, these amendments do not—I repeat not—seek special new privileges for the Canal & River Trust; they merely maintain the existing protections given to the British Waterways Board as a statutory body. These historic assets, which now also provide so many leisure facilities, deserve no less. I beg to move.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. There is not a single word in his speech with which I disagree, and I will do my best to be very brief at this late hour. I will try not to repeat any of the points that he has made. He is generous enough to say that I was able to raise the issue of the Canal & River Trust in Committee, and I got a very encouraging answer from the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. He said in his response to me:
“There is a special status attached to the National Trust because of the extent of the land it owns. Therefore, it occupies a special position, including its benefit in relation to SPP. That said, I hear what the noble Lord has said and it would be useful to arrange to sit down with him and the Canal & River Trust to establish exactly what the issues are and discuss the matter further”.— [Official Report, 4/2/13; col.51.]
The Minister very kindly honoured that commitment. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, was the government lead at the meeting on the 5 March. I think that all of us at that meeting came away encouraged that the Government were listening to the points that had been made not just in Committee but with great force by the representatives of the Canal & River Trust, and indeed by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. I am therefore a little disappointed that there is not a government amendment alongside that of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on the Marshalled List this evening. Maybe he is going to say that our amendment is of such perfect quality that there is no need for it to be amended and that they will therefore accept it, but it will be matter of very great regret indeed if the Government are not able to accede to the basic principle that the Canal & River Trust’s heritage assets are entitled to the same protection as the National Trust’s. The argument is unanswerable. It will be a matter of great disappointment if the Minister is not able to give that to us. If so, perhaps at a time when the House has more Members in it, we will have to come back to the amendment on Third Reading. As I say, I hope that he can help us, and I look forward to what he has to say.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, “he” has become “she”, as I hope noble Lords will notice.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Hodgson and to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, who introduced this matter in Committee, for setting out their amendments to Clause 22 on behalf of the Canal & River Trust. I was delighted to have an opportunity to meet and talk with representatives from the trust and to hear what they had to say. I am grateful to them for taking the time to come and tell me how they think the proposed changes to parliamentary procedure will affect the Canal & River Trust.
Of course we understand that the trust carries out a vital role in the preservation of the heritage of our inland waterways. However, I think that I am going to disappoint noble Lords because I will not be able to accept the amendments, and it may be helpful if I set out why.
My noble friend Lord Ahmad spoke in Committee on why the existing provisions for the examination of nationally significant infrastructure projects provide sufficient opportunities to make representations in cases involving the compulsory acquisition of statutory undertaker land. These opportunities will continue to be available to the Canal & River Trust if land it holds as an undertaker is subject to compulsory purchase under provisions in the Planning Act. Most importantly, the trust will still benefit from the provisions in Section 127 of the 2008 Act. This provides that where land was acquired by statutory undertakers—which, of course, British Waterways was—for the purposes of their undertaking and is used or held for those purposes, then it may be acquired only if the Secretary of State is satisfied that there will not be serious detriment to the carrying on of the undertaking, or that the land can be purchased and replaced with other land without any such detriment. This is a significant test. Alongside the need for a compelling case in the public interest for compulsory acquisition, it will be a key factor for the Secretary of State when reaching a decision on whether to authorise compulsory acquisition of statutory undertaker land.
I know from the meeting with the Canal & River Trust that it also has concerns about the changes we are making to special parliamentary procedure where open space is compulsorily acquired. On this, I make the point that the changes we are proposing will require strong tests to be passed before special parliamentary procedure can be disapplied. Where it is decided that special parliamentary procedure should not apply because suitable replacement land is not available, or is available only at prohibitive cost, this will be possible only where it is demonstrated to be strongly in the public interest for the development to start sooner than if it were subject to an SPP.
The provisions in this Bill treat the Canal & River Trust in the same way as any other statutory undertaker. That is inherently different from the position of the National Trust, which has been cited and which has special status in legislation dating back to 1907. In terms of special parliamentary procedure, the National Trust is specifically identified in legislation and given express protection by virtue of its role in the preservation of national heritage; for example, in the Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946, the Acquisition of Land Act 1981, and most recently in the Planning Act 2008. No other organisation with responsibilities for heritage has the same specific named status in respect of legislation covering special parliamentary procedure.
As I said at the outset, we do not believe that the Canal & River Trust should be treated in the same way as the National Trust. I regret that we cannot agree to these amendments, and I appreciate that both the noble Lords and the Canal & River Trust will be disappointed. However, given what I have said about the existing opportunities to allow the trust to make a case against any compulsory acquisition of its land and that these will remain unchanged following the passage of this Bill, I hope that the noble Lord will understand why we cannot accept his amendment and that he will withdraw it.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for his support and the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for his powerful remarks and for his description of our meeting, which I agree was encouraging, even if we have had a bucket of cold water poured over us this evening. My noble friend said quite a lot; she said it quite fast and there was quite a lot of technical detail that I would like to have a look at. I did not find the arguments as to why the National Trust is entirely different from the Canal & River Trust completely compelling because, as I understand it, quite a lot of the basis on which the Canal & River Trust holds heritage assets is precisely modelled on the way that the National Trust holds its land and property. However, the hour is late and I should like to read carefully what my noble friend said and think again, having reflected carefully. I thank her for what she told us and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.