Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment adds a new clause after Clause 77 and amends Section 67 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. It deals with constitutional arrangements of statutory bodies consequential on electoral changes. In essence, it provides for an order to be made to alter the constitutional arrangements of a statutory body if required as a consequence of an electoral change, and the order can be made under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. The important thing is that the statutory body itself would be able to make such an order.

I will briefly give some illustrative explanation as to why this is required. The amendment deals with an old constitutional anomaly that can arise when boundaries are redrawn following Electoral Commission reports. One such example is the case of local ward boundary changes for Malvern Hills District Council and the consequential impact on the Malvern Hills Trust, which has elected conservators and is charged with protecting and managing the Malvern Hills and the surrounding commons. The Boundary Commission has changed the Malvern Hills District Council ward boundaries. As a result we will have two wards, with some residents who can vote for conservators and pay the levy while others cannot. This is not an ideal situation, and will probably be subject to judicial review and legal challenge for the returning officer as a consequence. This amendment would allow for the changes to be brought about by the Malvern Hills Trust, and it would bring its boundaries in line with the district lines.

In moving this amendment, I declare an interest: I am a resident of Malvern Hills District Council, and my late father-in-law was a Malvern Hills conservator.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness. The Malvern Hills are of course an outstanding place of beauty in the West Midlands, and it is important that the trust is allowed to do its job as effectively as possible. This is yet another example of the way in which the Boundary Commission has been forced do its work, because of the constraints put upon it, where it goes across natural boundaries. In the case that the noble Baroness raised, the management of the Malvern Hills Trust is vital. It is also clearly important that residents have confidence in the arrangements of the trust and in the fairness of any levies they may have to pay. I hope that the Minister may be prepared to take a look at this and possibly come back on Report with a sympathetic response.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful. The problem has a wider resonance than the Malvern Hills Trust, although that is important. Coterminosity of local government and parliamentary boundaries is important, as is coterminosity of local government and National Health Service boundaries and, in this case, of the integrated care boards. If the Minister has any influence in other government departments, I ask her to impress on them the significance of residents who may be split between integrated care boards, like residents where I live in the Kirklees district of West Yorkshire, who are now being moved into a new Wakefield parliamentary constituency. This creates more problems than we sometimes recognise. Coterminosity and looking at the local implications of the lines we draw on a map are important and ought to be done only following detailed consultation with local people.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 178C and 509ZA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston, seek to enable any statutory body to amend by order its constitutional arrangements consequential on an electoral changes order made under Part 3 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. That legislation enables the Local Government Boundary Commission for England to implement by order recommendations for changes to an area’s electoral arrangements.

I am aware of the specific case at the moment where such a statutory body, the Malvern Hills Trust, considers that the new warding arrangements established by an electoral review order in respect of Malvern Hills District Council is incompatible with its constitutional and governance arrangements as provided for in several private Acts dating back to 1884. It is understandably concerned that such changes might raise questions about the ongoing legality of its constitutional and governance arrangements, and it wishes for something that it can address itself in a timely way.

I fully understand why the Malvern Hills Trust might wish to be granted powers to alter the constitutional or governance arrangements to ensure that they remain lawful and relevant to changing circumstances. However, I regret that we cannot support the amendments to the Bill. While they have the intention to resolve a specific local constitutional issue, the amendments are of general application to any statutory body affected by an electoral review carried out under Part 3 of the 2009 Act. In a practical sense, it is difficult for us to estimate how many bodies may be affected and wish to pass orders of this sort, or the impact on parliamentary time in dealing with them.

As drafted, the amendments would allow for secondary legislation to make amendments to primary legislation using the negative resolution procedure—the lower level of parliamentary scrutiny—and we do not think that this is appropriate. If the amendments were redrafted so that the orders were subject to the affirmative procedure, the potential would remain for significant impact on parliamentary business and on getting vital government business done.

More fundamentally, we cannot accept that it is right or prudent for the Bill to contain provision to allow for non-governmental bodies to be able to make orders that would amend primary legislation, as is the intention of the amendments. That must rightly be the role of government Ministers, except in exceptional circumstances, as with the Local Government Boundary Commission for England.

The commission is a parliamentary body accountable to the Speaker’s Committee. Such powers are appropriate in the case of the commission, given its status and vital independent role in ensuring fairness and confidence in the local government electoral system. Even if the scope of the amendment were narrowed so that any order could be made only by the Secretary of State, I am afraid that we could not accept it. While I understand that the purpose is to have a provision of general application, the concept used of the statutory body seems to be unclear. For example, does the definition of a statutory body include a local authority? On the face of it, this seems to be the case. If this is so, introducing this new provision would potentially create—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand the Minister’s response, which seems to come in heavy on what is a pretty small objective. If it is difficult to do in this way, what could her department do to sort it out?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

If the noble Lord can wait one minute, I shall say what the Government are prepared to do.

For all these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment—but the Government have been talking to senior officials of the trust to understand the issues that they face as a result of the electoral changes order. We have discussed various options that they can pursue, which include the Charity Commission making a scheme under Section 73 of the Charities Act 2011 and for the trust itself to pursue a private Bill to make the amendments that it thinks necessary. We are also exploring whether the Secretary of State has the vires to make an order in consequence of an electoral changes order, to amend or modify primary legislation, such as the Malvern Hills Act 1924. So we are working with the group. In realisation of that, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak next as I have an amendment in this group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for his excellent speech on his amendments and for meeting with me and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to discuss the Bill. I was pleased that he mentioned Peers for the Planet; I am not yet a member of that group but I will be a very enthusiastic joiner. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has greatly encouraged me in that respect.

The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, spoke about giving local authorities the tools that they need. That is also an important part of my Amendment 179A in this group, which I will speak to. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, referred to the Skidmore review and the Climate Change Committee’s work—which are both crucial to his and my amendments in this group—and to having a net-zero test running through the planning system. That is absolutely crucial, and now is the opportunity to do just that.

We have spoken before about the fact that there are some key strategic omissions from the Bill. Ensuring that climate change is fundamentally enshrined in law in the planning process is one of the most critical. My amendment is designed to address this too, by including it as one of the key purposes of the planning process. Over 80% of councils have now declared a climate emergency, with a pledge to net zero sitting alongside that, so surely it is time that the Government and legislation caught up and helped provide the tools to do that. The amendments in this group are designed to set out: first, an overall purpose for the planning process; secondly, to make absolutely sure that that includes the sustainability of all development; and, thirdly, to ensure that every individual development proposal is assessed to ensure that it is part of the solution to climate change, not adding to the problem.

As far back as November 2021, the Local Government Association commissioned a wide-ranging report to show how critical the local contribution to climate change could be. There are many important contributions recorded in that report, including one from Richard Blyth, head of policy at the Royal Town Planning Institute, who said:

“Collectively local activity and investment (for example on housing, infrastructure, water management) will only contribute positively to the ambition to leave the environment in a better state if there is a shared spatial framework for improving local environments”.


He pointed out that the Environment Act could take this only so far, but some of the measures it contained risked adding to the piecemeal landscape of environmental plans without clear directions for economic decision-making. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, referred to the piecemeal approach that results from some of the provisions in the Environment Act. The only way of ensuring that a holistic approach is taken to environmental issues is to ensure that all the relevant issues are built into local plans and considered for each development, whether that is water, flooding, soil, air quality, transport, access to open spaces, biodiversity, energy, waste or the whole-life carbon impact of buildings. These should all be part of the consideration of planning.

Net zero can be achieved only if decarbonisation happens in every place, everywhere across the country. These amendments would incorporate in the Bill plans for an overarching clause that would do just that. At the moment, if the overarching framework of the national management development plan, whatever it contains in relation to net zero—I am probably not the only one in this Committee who fears that this will be nowhere near ambitious enough in response to the climate emergency—does not have a corresponding network of local plans setting out clearly how development will take a radically new and ambitious approach to this, we will, I fear, continue to move at the current snail’s pace.

Local plans also need to reflect the needs of mitigation of climate change. In a paper from the University of Strathclyde by Dr Hawker and Dr Wade, they say:

“In particular, local planning decisions around land use and infrastructure must be made with acknowledgement of their implications for living with climate change. For example, increasing green spaces can support drainage in urban areas, helping to alleviate future flood risks”.


We have seen some magnificent examples in recent years—for example, pocket parks in high streets, which help with flooding issues—but they are by no means common enough yet. Local authorities often hold large building portfolios, including social housing. If they can be supported with long-term future funding, they can take action now to ensure that properties are energy efficient and much more cost effective for residents.

At Second Reading in the other place, the Secretary of State’s contention was that proposals in the Bill would strengthen environmental protection. He explained that a National Planning Policy Framework document would be published in July—that is July last year—setting out how environmental outcomes were to be driven. As far as I know, that document has not yet been published by the department. So, while we await specific policies on specific aspects of tackling environmental outcomes, fundamentally writing climate change into both development planning and mitigation measures for the planning system of the future is the only way of ensuring that they reach every part of the UK. If we do not do so in this Bill, we will have missed a huge opportunity to align the planning system with the climate change goals that should be right at its heart.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 179 and 271 from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. I thank him very much for bringing them to your Lordships’ Committee. I will make three quick points.

First, I do not understand why the Government are not using this Bill as a vehicle to embed the approaches that they have signed up to on net zero and climate change targets more generally. Surely this is the ideal legislation to ensure that our planning system supports what the Government say they wish to do.

Secondly, the noble Lord quite rightly mentioned the Skidmore review, which is very telling, and we have also heard from the Climate Change Committee. However, the National Audit Office’s report should not be ignored. It said that

“there are serious weaknesses in central government’s approach to working with local authorities on decarbonisation, stemming from a lack of clarity over local authorities’ overall roles, piecemeal funding, and diffuse accountabilities”.

The Government need to listen to the National Audit Office, because that is based on its expertise in monitoring and evaluating what local authorities are doing and the confrontations they are having on some of these issues due to flaws in the current local planning system and arrangements.

Thirdly, my background is mainly in health, and there is no doubt that unlocking economic growth through planning reform, as was highlighted in the net zero review, could achieve real health benefits by fully aligning our planning system with climate change and nature targets. The point has been made by the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which says that a healthy neighbourhood can also be a powerful levelling-up tool, leading to better mental and physical health and well-being outcomes through active travel, social connectivity and access to green spaces. Statistics published by the UN only a few days ago show that life expectancy in this country has deteriorated dramatically in comparison with many other countries since the 1950s. We were then one of the top countries for life expectancy; now we are in danger of dropping out of the top 30.

There is such a persuasive argument for tying in strong public preventive health with what must be done on climate change and net zero. Surely the planning system is one of the most powerful levers that we can use to make it happen. I hope we will come back to this very important matter on Report.