Land Use Framework

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I first welcome and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech. He is a worthy successor to those ancestors he mentioned. When I first saw his name on the list, I thought that he was the bloke who used to stop me seeing all those films I wanted to see—but, in fact, he brings much wider talents to the House. I welcome his obvious commitment to the subject matter of this debate and to the wider points he raised. It shows that the rather odd system by which all of us get here can throw up an asset to this House. He is very welcome.

I will also mention briefly the reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, to Lord Selborne, whose memorial service is today. He was a great champion of many of the matters to do with the countryside and beyond that we are addressing today.

Our land—whether urban or rural—is subject to multiple pressures, and our planning system is supposed to be the arbiter. The Town and Country Planning Acts of the 1940s are some of the unsung achievements of that Labour Government. By and large, they protected the English countryside from the more ravenous designs of developers, industry and tourism. For a long time, they also prevented more egregious development in our towns and cities. They significantly limited ribbon development and urban sprawl—particularly through the invention of the green belt. At the same time, that system allowed positive development in those post-war years—massive increases in the building of decent homes, the development of our infrastructure and the facilitating of industrial change. It did so within a context where key decisions were in the hands of elected authorities, which allowed the public to have a direct, clear say.

We would be foolish to dispense with that system, but it would also be foolish to deny that there are considerable pressures and problems both in our cities and countryside with which the planning system is now struggling. I do not mean what is—I fear—the knee-jerk reaction in certain parts of the Conservative Party and the press, encouraged by some property developers and their apologists, that the planning system is run simply by bureaucrats on behalf of axe-grinders and nimbys. That attitude seemed originally to be behind the Government’s intent to bring a planning reform Bill to Parliament. I hope that they are now thinking again.

Previous speakers have focused on the countryside. It is true that 70% of our land is designated for agriculture and only about 10% to 12% is built on. That is not the assumption of most people. In reality, the look of our countryside has developed. It has not been preserved in aspic by the planning system; nor should it have been. It has changed over the past 80 years, but the planning system has limited and directed that change in a way that has benefited our countryside and our ability to enjoy it. The detailed changes have not been determined by the planning system but by, for example, successive agriculture policies through the post-war Ministry of Agriculture, the EU and now the Agriculture Act that we have just passed, which will have significant effects on rural land use, so that the look of our fields and the configuration of our hedgerows will change again.

While past agriculture policies have, through incentives and regulatory structures, largely determined the balance and shifts of agricultural production and the look of our land, they have also been subject to increasing constraints and objectives for environmental and public health reasons. These too have had an effect on our countryside. With the new Agriculture Act, these incentives and regulations will be targeted principally at environmental outcomes. Food and material production will be determined largely by the market and, regrettably, by some unfortunate trade agreements. State intervention will be primarily on behalf of the environment, rather than food. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and others have said, it is true that the ELMS are not broad enough to deliver that prospect, but we know the direction in which we are moving.

There have been problems with the past effects of planning. Sometimes agriculture has been overconstrained in development—for example, on the use of old agricultural buildings and cottages. But in general, it has worked well for agriculture, as well as for those of us who enjoy the countryside.

Of course, the planning system itself is overladen by other interventions—on designating SSSIs, on AONBs and on national park regulations. They have all helped to preserve and enhance our countryside, but they are not always directly compatible with the principles of the planning system. There is renewed attention to biodiversity; all this preservation of the look of the countryside has not preserved the non-human inhabitants of the countryside, plants or animals.

The planning system has also often been overladen with national priorities. We have overarching commitments to road and railway infrastructure that run roughshod over some of the planning and protection of our countryside. In principle, I am in support of the full HS2 project, but I do not think its route should have endangered so much of our woodlands. That was not in the nature of the relationship, and that is why we need a more overarching framework.

We also need to control the quality of our waterways, the effect they have on the countryside and what we put into them from our agriculture processes—fertilisers and pesticides—and from domestic use. We need the regulation of that to fit in with the planning system.

Meanwhile, the other side of the coin is urban areas. Massive changes have taken place with the planning system’s permission, with public involvement and with a relative clarity and consistency of those planning decisions, but that is weakening. I have often complained in this House that we now have a whole sequence, particularly in urban areas, of unnecessary, carbon-emitting demolition and rebuild, when more sophisticated methods would retrofit those buildings to meet current objectives for the environment and public health. In many cases, that has destroyed the ambiance of our cities and towns and the look of our urban areas. You do not have to go very far from here, to the south bank of the Thames, to see what I am talking about.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, part of the problem in rural areas is that the planning resources of rural councils amount to a man and a dog, particular in two-tier areas in England. It is also true more generally, in both urban and rural areas, that the relationship between local authorities, developers and large builders has changed dramatically. When Harold Wilson was building 300,000 houses a year, he could deliver it and decide on it because local authorities were in the driving seat. They were dealing with hundreds of small builders; there was competition, and the local authorities were giving out the contracts. Now the balance of power has shifted dramatically. Local authorities, often with minimal planning staff and in most cases—even in rich urban areas—with no housing department, architects’ department or direct labour organisations, are dealing with massively resourced developers and an oligopoly of half a dozen or so housebuilders, all backed by multinational finance. In those circumstances, the balance of power is very substantially with the developer. The planning system as it is can have only a limited effect, although I acknowledge that in some cases it has a key one.

I am not saying that the old system made all the right choices in either town or country. I am saying that it is no longer strong or integrated enough and that it needs a new framework. The developers that have transformed our cities, not always for the better, now have their eyes on agricultural land. A change of use from food production may follow, particularly with the reduction in extensive grazing if, for one reason or another—because of green consumer choice or trade agreements—we eat less British-reared red meat in this country. The outcome for that land that is no longer used for agricultural purposes is unlikely automatically to be rewilding or forestry, as environmental outcomes would require. At least some of it will be taken up by developers, and mostly in inappropriate parts of the country. If we are not careful, that will happen, and in a way that does not take in the local authority, and the local community and its representatives will have no part whatever.

We need to revert to the basic principles of the Town and Country Planning Act, but to put it in a wider context, one that is relevant for a modern age in both our towns and our countryside.