Lord Marlesford
Main Page: Lord Marlesford (Conservative - Life peer)Localism Bill
Lord Marlesford Excerpts
Lord Marlesford
“(ai) that the document has had due regard to protecting and enhancing the quality and character of the countryside”
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, my Amendment 204C relates to the central issue of the Bill—the purpose of the planning system. I want, therefore, to put it in an historical and political context. I have always thought that the two great achievements of the post-war Attlee Government were the creation of a national health service in 1947 and the introduction, in 1948, of the planning system to protect the beauty of England. Both of these are hugely sensitive political issues. If a Government get either of them wrong, they will pay a heavy price at the polling booths. It is, perhaps, a coincidence that we have been discussing both these issues here today. The House has already expressed today its confidence in the intention of the Government to adjust its policy on the National Health Service in whatever way is necessary to get the right answer. At the moment, I am afraid I am less confident that the Government are prepared to improve this Bill. Indeed, I was disappointed by the pathetic reply that I received from my noble friend Lord Shutt in relation to my earlier amendment this week, on the need to keep Britain tidy. It is bad enough that officials should give Ministers briefs containing poor arguments, but what is quite unacceptable is that Ministers should parrot those same arguments from the Dispatch Box. I suggest that some Ministers need to take a lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on how to tear up the departmental line when standing at the Dispatch Box. Let me say at once that I am sure that comment in no way applies to my noble friend Lady Hanham, for whom I have the highest praise and regard.
The creation of our planning system really goes back to 1928. That was the year that the great architect and conservationist Clough Williams-Ellis produced a polemical book called England and the Octopus, in which, in the words of Jonathan Dimbleby:
“He waged war on the ugliness, selfishness and short-sightedness and the catastrophic consequences of these human frailties on the precious quality of rural England”.
In 1928, the CPRE, of which in 1996 Jonathan Dimbleby was president and I was chairman, was in its infancy; but Clough Williams-Ellis and the other founding fathers such as Patrick Abercrombie used it to create the pressure from which, 20 years later, we got our planning system. That the planning system needs reform, I hope none of us would contest; but the rather ill-informed and ill-prepared zest with which the Government launched this Bill and the draft NPPF provoked and indeed alarmed a large section of the huge community that cherishes the English countryside.
Amendment 204C, which is being promoted by the CPRE, and is also supported by the National Trust and the Heritage Alliance, seeks to ensure that, when they are preparing local development plans, local planning authorities give due consideration to the need to protect and enhance the countryside, in the words of the late Nicholas Ridley—who was a tough Treasury minister and a true Tory—“for its own sake”.
One of the central tenets of the post-war planning system in England is that by guiding appropriate development to sustainable locations in the countryside, the countryside itself should be protected from unnecessary and irreversible damage, and the regeneration of our towns and cities promoted.
This principle is currently upheld by a series of policies contained in national planning policy statements, including policy EC6 in Planning Policy Statement 4: Planning for Sustainable Economic Growth, that the countryside should be protected,
“for the sake of its intrinsic character and beauty”.
Critically, this protection is not just conferred on high-profile designated areas of countryside, such as national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and heritage coasts, but on the ordinary countryside which is enjoyed by and which improves the quality of life of rural and urban dwellers all over England. However, the Government's planning reforms, being implemented by both the Localism Bill and the draft NPPF, as currently drafted, stand to remove the existing protection for the wider, ordinary countryside. I should emphasise that undesignated countryside makes up well over half of all countryside in England.
In addition, the NPPF introduces a,
“presumption in favour of sustainable development”,
a material consideration which my right honourable friend the Chancellor, in his 2011 Budget speech, summarised as meaning that,
“the default answer to development is yes.”—[Official Report, Commons, 23/3/11; col. 956.]
Understandably, the Government have been reluctant to define the term “sustainable” but, as my noble friend Lord Deben says, in a sense we all know what we mean by sustainable. It is common sense and it is localism at its most intense.
As Amendment 204D, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, draws attention to, the draft NPPF also does not contain a presumption that previously developed land should be developed first—the brownfield first policy—and it does not require planning authorities to have policies on housing density.
We should remember two points. First, developers will always go for green land rather than brown, if they have the choice, as it is so much cheaper to build on. Secondly, in general, the lack of housebuilding, particularly now, is probably more due to the economy than to a shortage of land. Housebuilders will not build houses if they cannot sell them.
Taken together, these changes will have serious and potentially devastating implications for the future of the countryside. They will create pressure on undesignated countryside, drastically limit the ability of local authorities to contain urban sprawl, to promote sustainable patterns of development and, therefore, to maintain a distinction between town and country and to plan for a high-quality and sustainable built environment.
It is not at all clear how, in the absence of national policy that promotes the protection and enhancement of the wider countryside, the Government intend to ensure that the countryside is protected from unnecessary and irreversible damage under the terms of its planning reforms. My amendment would create a legal requirement that development plans should not be deemed sound unless they have had due regard to the protection and enhancement of the countryside.
In their natural environment White Paper, published earlier this year, the Government declared their ambition for,
“this to be the first generation to leave the natural environment of England in a better state than it inherited”.
This document, significantly, also recognises the intrinsic value of the natural environment, and explicitly includes the open countryside in its definition of natural environment.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, first, I thank everybody who took part in the debate and I hope and think that it was a useful debate. It is a little awkward in a way that there is a big debate on the same subject tomorrow. Perhaps it would have been better if that had been a bit later but that is the way the cookie crumbles.
There is one lesson that this Government have increasingly to learn. Their Achilles heel is the way in which they have handled legislation. Surely there is one basic rule of politics that everybody here ought to know: in politics, perception is reality. It is all very well for my noble friend to say, as she charmingly did—perhaps with some justification—that there were some overstatements made by the National Trust particularly, and my noble friend Lord Deben made the same point. How much better would it have been if the Government, in the process of preparing their legislation, had consulted with these bodies instead of, not surprisingly, arousing huge apprehension?
I heard my right honourable friend Mr Pickles saying with triumph, “A thousand pages of planning experience drawn up over the last 60 years? Away with it! We will bring it down to 50 pages”. That was bound to make people realise that you probably could not put into 50 pages everything that was needed. It would have been a great deal better if they had sat down with people like the National Trust and CPRE before producing all these drafts. Instead, the Prime Minister had to write a letter to the National Trust, saying, “Please do not get too upset with us, we will talk to you”, and Ministers are now doing so—much better late than never.
I hope for the Government—and perhaps the usual channels on my side will convey this—that this applies not just to this Bill but to a number of others, and in future legislation I hope that they will take a little more trouble to consult and prepare the ground and show more sensitivity. I am pleased to feel, from what the Minister has just said, that the lesson has got home. I would have confidence in her and I do not have any problem in withdrawing my amendment tonight because I am sure that as the NPPF is a draft, as she said, and is susceptible to being changed, and there are discussions going on about it, we will eventually get the right answer.
However, it matters to a lot of people and there are people who will only get an impression and the impression is what matters. The Government have a lot of work to do in the next year or so to put right the impression that has been created so far. I hope that this lesson has been learned and will be applied to other Bills. I thank everybody for what they have said, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.