Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments which, as the Minister has said, bring decisions made by the Secretary of State on urban development areas back to Parliament in the form of affirmative resolutions rather than negative resolutions. In my view, which I have expressed frequently, far too much in this enormous Bill is set out in the form of decisions left entirely to the Secretary of State to fill in by way of statutory instruments. Far too often, the only restraint is the wholly inadequate procedure of negative resolutions. I am pleased that the Minister has recognised the overreach in the original drafting and has brought forward amendments to correct that.

In Committee, I expressed general support for the proposition of locally led development corporations, and that was helped on by the Minister’s reassuring words to the effect that the wide discretion given to the Secretary of State in Clause 162 to designate a development corporation is, in practice, entirely conditional on there first being a positive initiative from that locality. That is all the more important in view of the strange reluctance to include town and parish councils in the formal consultation process.

In responding to this debate, I would be very grateful if the Minister could make assurance doubly sure on that point of local initiation and leadership of the new generation of development corporations. I look forward to hearing her reassurance on that point.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my intervention on this subject will be brief. I did not speak on development corporations in Committee, but I have been following the subject very carefully. In response to this very short debate, or perhaps more appropriately in a subsequent letter, might my noble friend explain to us a little more about how the various forms of development corporations are intended to be deployed?

As far as I can see, in addition to the mayoral development corporations—which are not much affected by this Bill—we will continue to have scope for urban development corporations initiated by the Secretary of State, we will continue to have scope for new town development corporations initiated by the Secretary and we will have locally led urban development corporations and locally led new town development corporations that may be established at the initiative of local authorities under this Bill. By my count, we have five different forms of development corporations.

There is a certain amount of speculation about under what circumstances, in what areas and for what purposes these development corporations may be deployed, and about the Government’s intentions. It would be reassuring to many to hear from the Government about that, and in particular about their presumption that they would proceed, particularly for new towns and new development corporations, by reference to those that are locally led and arise from local authority proposals, as distinct from continuing to use the powers for the Secretary of State to designate an area and introduce a development corporation at his or her own initiative. It would be jolly helpful to have more flesh on the bones of what these various development corporations look like and how they will be deployed by government.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, those who have heard me speak in this Chamber will know that I am a great fan of development corporations, having grown up in a town that, apart from our historic old town, was created and, for the most part, built by Stevenage Development Corporation. At that time, the innovation of development corporations took a great deal of debate in Parliament to initiate, and we have hopefully moved on a bit towards devolution since the middle of the last century.

If there is to be parliamentary scrutiny of the establishment of development corporations, it is absolutely right that it should be done by the affirmative procedure, so we welcome the movement on that in Amendments 146 and 147, to ensure that the establishment of locally led urban and new town development corporations is drawn to the attention of both Houses, in the same way as those that are not locally led.

We hope that it will be the intention of government to scrutinise only the technical aspects of governance, for example, as it would be entirely against the principles of devolution that the Bill sets out to promote for any Government to effectively have a veto on whether proposals for a development corporation go ahead. During the passage of the Bill, we have talked about a new relationship of mutual trust between local and central government, and we hope that such parliamentary scrutiny will not be used to undermine that.

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the importance of determining the nature of parliamentary involvement in different types of development corporation. Of course, we would have concern about Parliament intending to have a veto on the locally led ones. The other amendments in this group are consequential on the Minister’s previous amendment on page 195. We look forward to her comments about the points raised.