Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). I, too, will speak about highways, but I will also speak about land use planning and fracking. The link between the measures on all those issues is that they will improve the competitiveness of the UK economy and provide the conditions for growth, which will mean more jobs and will enable us to fund the many things that we want Governments to do.

Part 1 of Bill relates to road transport, which is massively important to businesses in my constituency because Rugby is, of course, at the centre of the UK and at the crossroads of the motorway network, with the M1, the M6 and the A14 meeting at Catthorpe. I want to put on record my gratitude for the recent announcement of new flyovers and underpasses on the A46 at Binley and Walsgrave, which will be of great help to my constituents who suffer from congestion in that area.

Rugby is in a strategic location, which has meant that the logistics industry has developed apace over recent years. We have the Daventry international rail freight terminal—DIRFT—where Eddie Stobart and Tesco are big occupiers, and where Sainsbury’s is developing the UK’s largest warehouse. Immediately adjacent to Daventry is the Rugby radio site, which will become a large housing development with 6,200 new homes and will provide the workers for the many distribution sites on the eastern side of Rugby. There is significant warehouse development adjacent to junction 1 of the M6, where Gap and Pearson Education have substantial units. Nearby, there is the Gateway site, the first occupier of which will be H&M, the clothes retailer, which will have a substantial site. At other sites, we have DHL, which delivers for the NHS, and companies such as Premier Foods.

The logistics industry is massively important to Rugby’s economy. It was previously thought of as a low-wage, low-skill industry, with big lads lifting boxes, but nothing could be further from the truth. I recently spent time at Premier Foods, which has had notoriety in recent days for other reasons. It is a big supplier to our major food retailers. At its distribution site in Rugby, it was introducing jobseekers, many of whom had been out of work for some time, to the modern workplace. It was preparing them for interview and for the environment that they would find on going to seek work. I saw forklift truck operators moving products around the warehouse using barcode readers. They had computer screens attached to the forklift trucks to provide maximum efficiency in the warehouse’s operations. Logistics is far from the low-scale, low-skill industry that many people paint it as.

Logistics is an industry that I am familiar with because I ran a small-scale wholesale distribution business that took advantage of Rugby’s excellent location and connections. In addition to efficiency in the warehouse, the logistics industry depends on an efficient trunk road network. I want to draw attention to two issues. The first is how the transport provisions of the Infrastructure Bill will assist us in dealing with congestion. It is believed that congestion will cost £10 billion by 2040. We need more capacity on the strategic road network to minimise bottlenecks and avoid congestion. The second issue is the need for prompt reopening of the strategic road network, whether it is an entire motorway or A road or lanes thereof, after catastrophic events.

On the first issue, if there is insufficient capacity, the logistics industry is able to make fewer deliveries per vehicle, which leads to an increased cost per delivery, a higher price for the customer and smaller profits being available to businesses for reinvestment. Often, the consequence of the slow reopening of a motorway or other road on the strategic network after an event that has caused it to close is that set-day deliveries cannot be made on the allocated day, leading to customers getting goods a day late, which can lead to problems with production processes that operate on a just-in-time basis. In businesses such as the one that I ran, if one day’s deliveries did not get out, it was necessary to hire a vehicle and employ a temporary driver for the following day to get the goods out. Of course, that adds to the cost of getting the product to the customer.

All those issues make improvements to the management of the strategic road network essential. It is for that reason that I support the creation of a strategic highways company in the Bill. The improvements need to take place at the right time to avoid the stop-start approach that we have had in recent years. I was interested to note the view of the Institution of Civil Engineers, which stated:

“Transforming the Highways Agency into a government owned company will facilitate a welcome shift away from the costly and inefficient stop/start pattern of investment that has plagued the development and operation of our road network.”

That will deliver an upgrade to the important logistics businesses in my constituency, enabling them to operate more efficiently and keep costs to the consumer down.

The businesses in my constituency expect the Government agency to be more accountable, in the same way that they are accountable to their customers. I am therefore pleased that clause 5 gives the Secretary of State the power to impose fines when the strategic highways company fails to meet the requirements of the road investment strategy. I am also pleased that clauses 8 to 12 provide oversight through an independent road users’ watchdog, which is currently known as Passenger Focus. That will provide more transparency and accountability and drive costs down, which is of great importance to businesses in Rugby.

I am interested to note the Labour party’s criticism that there is a lack of any reference to local roads. Strategic roads make up just 2.6% of the road network, but account for 60% of freight and business traffic. It is therefore entirely right that the Bill focuses on them. Local roads are a matter for local authorities and local communities when they determine their priorities.

The second set of proposals that I want to refer to are those on planning, land use and buildings. The Communities and Local Government Committee is looking at the operation of the national planning policy framework to see how that revised system, which was introduced just three or four years ago, is bedding in. Members will have to await our report, but during the evidence sessions we found no evidence that an overhaul was needed. It is interesting that the Opposition have no proposal to change the national planning policy framework fundamentally. Clearly, the system is bedding in and needs more time. The introduction of further uncertainty would not be helpful at this stage.

There are two areas where the Bill introduces proposals to the national planning policy framework. The fundamental principles of the NPPF are localist, right down to neighbourhood plans where small communities have their say on the types of development that can take place in their areas, but there need to be processes for the developments that we would describe as bigger than local. Much of this is currently dealt with under the Planning Act 2008, and refers to nationally significant infrastructure projects. I was interested to hear a Member earlier referring to the Thames tideway tunnel and Hinkley Point C power station as the kind of development that would be dealt with through the national significant infrastructure projects. That does not mean a great deal for my constituency, but of course we all need roads, water and waste projects. Traditionally, we have been glacially slow in dealing with planning applications in this area, and there is no question but that we need to speed up the process in the interests of making our economy more efficient and our manufacturers and businesses better able to compete with their overseas competitors. The Bill proposes to speed up the existing powers by appointing inspectors more quickly and by reducing bureaucracy and the cost of inspection through fewer inspectors on a panel. That will enable the country to get on with it, once principles for development are established.

A second area where the Bill would help to enable development get under way more quickly is on the discharge of planning conditions. These are delays caused once the planning process has been gone through, once the principle of development has been given on a site. The NPPF gives developers more certainty by directing development to those areas where the local planning authority has determined that planning should take place. Often, however, that certainty is replaced by an uncertainty over when the regulatory burden, through conditions, might be discharged. Development has been agreed in principle, but the developer is unable to make a start pending conditions, such as the preparation of a report. I was interested to hear, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) mention a builder who pointed out that a third of his land bank, a total of 5,000 plots, is currently awaiting reserve matters.

I am the first to acknowledge that planners are keen to see good development take place. Planning has a positive role, and the role of planning is not to frustrate developers. There are many good planning officers who hold regular meetings with developers, so that developers can understand well the priorities of a local planning authority. I single out as a very good planning department that of my local authority of Rugby borough council, which I know has a tradition of meeting developers. I am as keen as they are for good development to come to my constituency, because good development provides jobs and prosperity from which all my constituents benefit. I would expect a developer, faced with excessive conditions causing a problem with getting development under way, to meet local planners to resolve those conditions. That is the approach the Local Government Association, in its representation, is looking for.

Often, the local planning authority takes too long to respond to a request from a developer to be released from a condition. That can have the effect of delaying development from taking place, so I support the provisions for deemed discharge. I was interested to note the criticism from the Labour party that there are no garden city principles in the Bill. I think most of us can accept that the garden city principles are favourable principles, but it is a matter for local communities, if they wish to see them introduced in their area, to build them into their local plan to require that to take place.

On fracking, many years ago I studied land law and I seem to remember the principle that, “He who owns land does so up to the heavens and down to the centre of the earth.” That broad principle cannot exist in a general environment. We need to put this issue in perspective. Most fracking takes place at a minimum of 300 metres deep, which is 10 times deeper than the deepest London tube station. This is an important issue, because we need to get our energy costs under control. In my constituency, we have a cement manufacturer, and the most expensive place in the world to produce cement is the UK. We need to address fracking to get our energy costs down and to allow our businesses to be competitive with those in the rest of the world.