Localism Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

I hope that that is helpful. If noble Lords want some contacts in order to go and look at it themselves, I will happily pass them on. I do not know whether this will be the El Dorado of tomorrow—I suspect that it will not. Equally, I do not know whether it will be a total environmental disaster—I suspect that it will not. I suspect that it will be relatively small scale in this country, but even so it needs to be done absolutely properly.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I was thinking, as that speech went on, what it would have been like if we had been discussing, a couple of hundred years ago, the idea of opening up deep-mine coal in northern England. I think we would have been rather more aware of the dangers and that the dangers would have been rather more real. Houses do fall down coal-mines from time to time; the idea that they could fall down a hole made by fracking gas two miles deep is really not tenable. I am very sad to say this, as an ex-member of both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, but there is a typical, current environmentalist film around called “Gasland”, which, as far as I can establish, peddles nothing but lies, including that tap. If you drill a well through coal-seams you get gas out of it. That is not surprising, and methane is not exactly dangerous anyway. We are talking about a technology that, by and large, chucks household chemicals two miles deep. There is a chance of them coming back to the surface, but I am sure we will be careful about what we allow to be stuck down the wells.

I am someone who, although I do not have the pleasure of living in Lancashire, has lived in the Hampshire oilfields. Noble Lords may remember that in the 1980s there was a nice little mini-boom in wells all over mid-Hampshire, which we suffered happily without any great effect. There was a month when the drills were busy and then you were just left with a hut. That is really what happens with shale gas; you have a well every half kilometre or so and you are left with a garden shed that produces gas. It is not exactly an environmental problem, other than the interference when the drilling is going on. I think this is something that we will deal with extremely well within the boundaries of our ordinary and sensible systems for dealing with potential environmental hazards and for planning.

In fact, the Bill will make things better, because one of the problems with such developments in the past has been that they have benefited the oil company, they have benefited the Government and benefited the landowner who is lucky enough to have the well drilled on his patch, but the local community, which has put up with the noise, the transport during the drilling and the continuing risk of something going on with the well, gets nothing. Under the Bill, of course—under neighbourhood planning—the benefit will be shared and that will be a great step forward.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, if I understand my noble friend’s proposition, it is that the hydraulic fracturing of underground rock will be brought within the national infrastructure projects regime, the planning regime that deals with major projects. I think that is central to what my noble friend is moving. We have had a wider debate about the potential importance of shale gas, what that might mean and the risks associated with it. It seems to me that we need a broader regime that encompasses all those issues: licensing regimes, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, not only to deal with exploration, but with exploitation as well. If there is to be no national infrastructure projects approach to this, then planning, presumably, is a matter for local planning authorities and, indeed, neighbourhood planning. That does not seem to me to fit well with something that is potentially of huge national significance, with potentially huge risks and uncertainties attached to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that this issue is worthy of a further debate. Perhaps when we have debated the NPPF to death we might turn our attention to it. I am a novice on this, but it is a fascinating and hugely important issue. I can remember when North Sea oil first opened up. It was a project on which I worked in my former life and I know some of the debate that went on around that. However, if I understand it correctly, my noble friend’s proposition about the environment within which the planning ought to be considered is a straightforward one, and he makes a good case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 232AA. This calls for an independent review of the provisions of Part 5 of this Act; it calls for a report of this review, and it requires a copy of the report to be presented to both Houses of Parliament.

In particular, it requires the report to cover the effectiveness of sustainable development outcomes; the extent to which brownfield land has been developed; the extent to which green belt has been protected; whether affordable housing targets have been achieved; and data about planning approvals and rejections, et cetera. In short, it requires taking stock of how the new planning landscape is working in practice. It will no doubt be argued that there is going to be post-legislative scrutiny of this legislation in any event, but we consider the ramifications of this part of the Localism Bill to be of particular significance and that it should have this special focus. It requires this report within three years of entry into force, but this timescale is not sacrosanct for us.

If Ministers have confidence in their case, this should not present a difficulty. There can be no doubt that in recent months, since the publication of this Bill, and particularly since the publication of the draft NPPF, the profile of planning—and the purpose of planning—has been raised in our country and our communities. One would not normally expect to see headlines in the Telegraph dominated by planning matters; and we have in a way been startled spectators in unpleasant exchanges between the Planning Minister and no less a body than the National Trust.

Whatever the Government intended to be the outcome of these proposed changes to our planning system, there is no doubt that the way they have gone about it has caused chaos and added huge uncertainty in the planning system, of itself creating paralysis and holding back growth, the very thing they were supposedly designed to stimulate. The fears are that the Government were redefining the purpose of the planning system and refocusing on economic growth to the detriment of the broader requirements of sustainable development. There were plenty of signals to this effect: the presumption in favour of sustainable development; the denial hitherto of transitional provisions; the very wording of the NPPF, which contains no recognisable definition of sustainable development; the scrapping of “brownfield first”; and the inevitable uncertainty created by cramming 1,000 pages of regulation and guidance into 50, even accounting for the removal of overlaps and duplication. Alongside this was the introduction of the neighbourhood planning regime, to be supported by local planning authorities at a time of stretched resources; the duty to co-operate as a substitute for regional and sub-regional spatial strategies; and the operation of the new homes bonus as the supposed driver of new dwellings. Uncertainty abounds. We need a process for Parliament to be able to take stock of where this is all taking us. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

I hope we see annual reports. This is such an exciting, interesting and unexplored area that we are going into that we really need to know what is going on rather earlier than three years. However, I would measure things in a much happier vein than the list of grizzles in proposed subsection (2) in this amendment. It is going to make a great change and advance to people’s lives—and I would like to see that documented—as much as create possible pitfalls.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, at this time of night I am going to resist the temptation thrown at me by the Labour Lord opposite to discuss further the sustainable development in the NPPF—great sighs of relief opposite. I will therefore confine myself to the proposal that there should be a report on progress.

We agree that there should be a transparent system for monitoring and reporting. As with decentralising decision-making over housing and planning matters to councils and local communities, we expect them to report progress on all aspects of planning and to make this available to local communities to whom they are accountable. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 already places a duty on councils to undertake a survey of matters affecting the development of their area, including—I promise I will not go back to sustainable development again—its physical, economic, social and environmental characteristics.

The council is already required to produce an annual monitoring report of local planning activity. Our proposals in the Bill and local planning regulations, on which we have recently consulted, will streamline the process for preparing these reports, reducing the burden on councils and strengthening public accountability. Local planning regulations will also require councils to report progress in relation to neighbourhood development plans and demonstrate how they have worked with others under the duty to co-operate.

My department will support councils in this process by continuing to produce official statistics that can contribute to the evidence base used by councils to develop their plans. With these reassurances, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.