Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Nick Raynsford Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

That question might have sounded like a good idea earlier this morning, but this is the wrong Bill, the wrong matter and the wrong debate in which to raise it. If the hon. Gentleman writes to me, no doubt we will do our best to help.

In an internet age, Britain must be able to compete virtually; otherwise, businesses will literally select another country at the click of a mouse. We live in a connected age, but technologies also make our society interdependent. Everyday families take for granted the “just-in-time” technologies that stock our supermarkets and drop off internet deliveries to our doors. To make them work, however, we need to build and provide the storage depots, warehouses and rail exchanges, and the supporting energy infrastructure to keep the economy moving.

The number of large-scale business and commercial applications taking over a year to determine is rising, so this Bill will allow an alternative process to decide nationally significant business and commercial projects within 12 months of the start of examination. Existing requirements to consult local communities will be retained, as will democratic checks and balances.

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

On this occasion, I believe the Secretary of State is referring to a former Minister of State—with no disrespect to the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), whose distinction is universally known.

[Mr Raynsford]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and hope this will not cause him any difficulty with his colleague. How will “nationally significant developments” be defined? What definitions will be used to decide whether developments are nationally significant and thus fall within the remit?

[Mr Pickles]

First, there are national policy statements, in addition to which we are going to consult. Let me be absolutely clear that it is our ambition to ensure that, providing local authorities put together a planning performance agreement with these large developments, this measure will not be necessary; it is there to help. I give way now to my distinguished hon. Friend.

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[Mr Raynsford]

I have been following my right hon. Friend’s remarks with considerable interest. Does he think it significant that the ministerial team surrounding the Minister is entirely different from the one that sat with him in the early period, when he was formulating the national planning policy framework? Might that also be an indication of what has happened in Government?

[Hilary Benn]

That is an extremely interesting suggestion by my right hon. Friend, and only those on the Government Front Bench can say whether that is the case or not.

Clauses 2 and 3, which I do not think the Secretary of State mentioned, would allow the planning inspectorate to award costs. What is the purpose of this? Perhaps the Minister could say when he winds up. How can he assure us that it will not turn into a tax on local democratic decision making? Why should the Planning Inspectorate want to impose costs of its own volition, when developers can already ask it to do so under the law as it currently stands?

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[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I always appreciate forays into family history from those on the Opposition Front Benches, and I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) is not in his place. I imagine that democratic centralism was imbued into him at the paternal knee. His references to it were undoubtedly entertaining, although the House might appreciate a modest reality check thereafter. A reality check, it seems to me, is an old advocate, and in my experience a fair one. The weaker one’s opponent’s case, the more rhetoric they feel obliged to use. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench will take on board the reality, which is that the Government inherited a planning system that was seriously failing. We have put in place important measures to improve things through the Localism Act 2011 and the national planning policy framework, and improvements are being seen.

Under the previous Government’s watch, the Killian Pretty review pointed out that only three out of 64 major schemes proceeded without delay and referred to the expense that that brings. This Government have been trying to put that right. A number of measures in the Bill pick up on issues that were flagged up in the consultation on the NPPF, so the suggestion that they are incompatible is nonsense. The NPPF did not require primary legislation because it was a matter of policy. The issues that were flagged up and are dealt with in the Bill do require primary legislation, so it is perfectly logical to legislate to put those measures in place.

Let me deal with clause 1, about which there has been much heat and not much light from Opposition Members. I take on board—I have no doubt the Minister will confirm this—the response by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) to the Communities and Local Government Committee. In reality, most planning authorities do a good job, but there are issues about the capacity of smaller local planning authorities. Some matters do not require legislation, but are gradually being dealt with by good practice within the local authority sector itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) referred to the capacity of planning departments, particularly in some small rural district councils, and, increasingly, shrewd councils in such circumstances are sharing their planning departments. Those of us who have spent many years in local government hope that that will become the norm rather than the exception, and that valuable and comparatively expensive professional services will be shared across a number of planning authorities. That does not alter the position of local councillors, who are accountable to their electors as members of the planning authority, but sharing professional advice makes obvious common sense in the circumstances I mentioned.

That said, although there is good progress, and although the planning guarantee has been an important factor in raising the performance bar, a small number of local authorities consistently do not meet that requirement. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State set out, that is exactly what the Bill intends to deal with. It does not take many planning authorities to hold up important schemes. That stance is echoed by the Home Builders Federation, which does not regard the Bill as sweeping away the majority of planning authority procedures. In my experience as a Minister and shadow Minister, house builders work hard with local authorities. Good volume house builders such as Berkeley Homes and Countryside Properties generally do not end up on appeal, because they “roll the turf” first, using the requirement for pre-engagement and consultation with councillors, council officers and their communities. That works in many cases. The Home Builders Federations has stated that it welcomes

“the option of, in extremis, enabling home builders to apply to the Secretary of State where a local authority has a record of very poor performance.”

That is what clause 1 is about—it is sensible and proportionate.

[Mr Raynsford]

The hon. Gentleman has said twice that a small number of authorities have, in his view, an unacceptably poor standard of performance. Will he please name them?

[Robert Neill]

The right hon. Gentleman tries the same old trick as the shadow Secretary of State. Importantly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made it clear that there will be criteria, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has said there will be criteria and an objective test. I am not foolish enough to go down the route the right hon. Gentleman suggests, because I am not privy to the work that we did to develop the objective test, but I have complete confidence that the test will be a sensible one. The point he attempts to make is a bogus one, as he well knows. With every respect to him, I ought to be used to that by now.

The second point to remember about clause 1 is that, although it has been suggested there is no right of appeal, the clause shows common sense. If in a rare number of cases a decision is taken by the Secretary of State, he can hardly appeal against it—that would be nonsense. However, the option of judicial review on that decision remains. As all hon. Members know, recent experience indicates that developers and other groups have not been slow to exercise the right of judicial appeal when they think there are grounds. The safeguard that remains is therefore a significant one.

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[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

First, may I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register?

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), and I agree with most of what he said. He rightly dissected the elements in this Bill that have nothing to do with growth and very little to do with infrastructure, and which are probably in part the product of ideas that were floated by a Mr Beecroft in a report that gained notoriety and should have been consigned to the dustbin. I advise the hon. Gentleman to think about who he sups with in coalition, because his views as expressed this evening are not very close to those that seem to be driving this Bill.

It is a curious Bill, and it has a grand title referring to “Growth and Infrastructure”, thereby implying that it will have a substantial impact on the economy and on development. If it were to stimulate the economy and ensure long-overdue new investment in infrastructure, we would be able to welcome it. Sadly, however, it follows the same line as its predecessor, the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill, which we dealt with in this House just a few weeks ago. When that Bill was announced in the summer, the Government claimed it would unlock some £40 billion in new infrastructure development and a further £10 billion in housing investment. One of the Lords Ministers stated in July that there was £40 billion-worth of shovel-ready schemes ready to go by the autumn. We are well and truly into the autumn now, yet so far the Government have not been able to identify a single new scheme to benefit from that legislation.

In the final stages of consideration of that earlier Bill a couple of weeks ago, we asked about the success criteria and how the legislation’s performance would be measured. That question clearly flummoxed the Minister responding to the debate, who simply told us we would have to wait and see. After that experience, it is hardly surprising that Opposition Members—as well as a significant number of Government Members—are very sceptical indeed about the claims being made for this Bill, which appears to be simply a collection of disparate items put together for political effect, but with very little empirical evidence as to their ability to achieve the real investment in infrastructure that is needed.

We have read a lot over the past few days about the need for more infrastructure investment. We have heard that from the Mayor of London: he specifically said that the Government are going slow on infrastructure investment. He has also called for a speeding up of the consideration of the need for more aviation runway capacity in the south-east. I agree with that. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) echoed that view in his contribution today, saying that our response to the need for investment in aviation infrastructure was inadequate and that addressing that need should be a priority. They and the rest of us will look in vain for anything in this Bill to help accelerate the glacial pace of the Davies commission on aviation capacity. That commission has clearly been set up by this Government for “long-grass purposes”—in order to kick the issue into touch until after the general election. The same Government have introduced this Bill, saying it is about speeding up infrastructure investment. There is a clear inherent conflict between the Government’s stated objective of stimulating infrastructure investment and what they are actually doing.

Clause 1 has received a lot of attention. It can be summarised as the “blame it all on planning” clause. Two and a half years ago the incoming Government said that the old system they inherited—the top-down, centralist system—was the problem and that they would tear it up and replace it with a new localist planning system. At the time a number of us advised them that introducing such radical change was not the best way to achieve improved confidence at a time when confidence was vital to stimulate the economy and that what they were doing risked having a catastrophic effect on planning consents. The current figures show the parlous situation in development. We have only to look at housing investment in recent years to see what a bad state we are in and how the changes that were made to the planning system a year ago have not improved things, but have, in many ways, made them worse.

Let us consider the housing supply figures. I was astonished to hear the Secretary of State say in his opening speech that the number of affordable homes being built was increasing, because the figures show exactly the opposite. The most recent National House-Building Council report states:

“The affordable housing sector continues to show a poorer performance than the private sector. Housing starts for the three months to the end of September 2012 from NHBC were 32.8% below the same period in 2011.”

When combined with the private sector, the reduction was 10.6% compared with last year. The combined housing starts are down by 10%, therefore, and the affordable housing starts are down by 32%, yet the Secretary of State claims things are getting better. They are not; they are getting very much worse, and this Government’s policies have been damaging.

It would be nice to hear the Government express a degree of remorse for their mistakes and a willingness to consider changes that would improve things, but I do not see very much evidence of that. Instead, it is being suggested that powers should be taken away from local authorities and given to the Planning Inspectorate in order to speed up both infrastructure and housing development.

When we probed the Secretary of State on the criteria that will be applied to defining which authorities may have their planning powers removed and their cases referred directly to the Planning Inspectorate, we were not given a very clear response. When the planning Minister, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), gave evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee, he highlighted two criteria: the number of times the Planning Inspectorate had overturned an authority’s decision on appeal, and the speed with which authorities deal with planning applications. So, like my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, who gave an excellent speech and a forensic demolition of the Bill, I looked at Planning magazine. It has produced a helpful table showing authorities that might fall into the category of being tardy in dealing with applications or having a disproportionate number of their cases overturned on appeal. Could I find Hackney listed—the one authority the Secretary of State identified? Yes, it was there, but only at the very bottom of one of the three lists—it was in only one of the three. It was the 21st—out of 25—lowest scoring English councils for determining all applications within 26 weeks. That is not exactly the kind of criterion that would lead one to assume that it deserves to be singled out for having powers stripped away from it. By contrast, Stratford-on-Avon, Torbay and Kensington and Chelsea all feature much higher up the lists, and all are in two out of three of the lists.

I am pleased that you are in the Chair, Mr Hoyle, rather than the Deputy Speaker who preceded you, because I see that the hapless Ribble Valley is the only authority in the country to appear in all three lists. It would therefore appear to be high in the pecking order of authorities likely to have their planning powers taken away from them, if the Minister’s criteria, as defined to the Select Committee, are applied in practice. I have to say that a lot of councillors in a lot of authorities all over the country will be extremely nervous as to how this power will be applied, given the lack of clarity and given what the evidence suggests about where weaknesses and failures have been.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I wonder whether my right hon. Friend will excuse my ignorance of geography and who has political control. Will he identify who has political control of the local authorities he cited?

[Mr Raynsford]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I think he will be able to guess that Stratford-on-Avon, Kensington and Chelsea, Torbay and Ribble Valley all have Conservative-controlled authorities. I was not making a political point; I was simply observing the bizarre nature of the criteria that the Government appear to be operating in determining which authorities will have their planning powers stripped away from them and their cases referred to the Planning Inspectorate.

On the renegotiation of section 106 agreements, we again see a bizarre set of proposals that do not appear to have a sensible rationale and could have very perverse consequences. My experience—I do talk to a lot of people involved in the development of housing schemes—is that most local authorities are now being perfectly practical and pragmatic about renegotiating with developers where they believe that the affordable housing content in a section 106 agreement is genuinely a block to successful development. What local authorities are not doing is rolling over when developers come back insisting on having the entire affordable housing content stripped away. What is so crass about the Government’s action is that their clause will provide exactly the incentive to developers to say to local authorities, “We are going to get powers to overrule you, so we expect you now to roll over and not to require the affordable housing content in this scheme any longer.”

[Bill Esterson]

My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point about the effect of the change on section 106. He has vast experience, so will he explain just what the impact of this change will be, given that there is already evidence, some of which I provided in my speech, of authorities having sensible negotiations? What does he think the difference will be? What damage will be done?

[Mr Raynsford]

I fear that the consequence will be to embolden developers who simply want to ditch section 106 obligations to try to bamboozle or bludgeon local authorities, which are not confident about what will happen, into agreeing far fewer section 106 obligations, or possibly none at all. That would be very unfortunate, at a time when we all recognise that the affordable housing output is woefully inadequate and we ought to be doing everything possible to encourage more affordable housing. I fear that the whole effect of this provision will not be what the Government say it will be and that it will be the opposite: it will discourage the provision of affordable housing, which is really needed.

Finally, I wish to discuss the postponement of the business rate revaluation. That is the classic case of a piece of short-term political opportunism that could have serious, adverse, long-term consequences. Revaluations should be conducted free of political interference. They should be conducted on a regular basis, which businesses should be able to forecast. Businesses should not be nervous that the revaluation times will be changed to suit the convenience of any particular Government. We have been using a five-yearly cycle for business rates. The Ministers on the Front Bench would do well to think about the contrast with the arrangements for council tax. As there has been that unwillingness of politicians to have a regular cycle of updates—that applies to all three parties, because the Liberal Democrats went along with this Government in postponing any revaluation—we have the absurdity of council tax valuations based on notional 1991 values. What is being done by the Government risks going down that slippery path, which could well lead to a postponement, further postponement and ultimately a complete lack of confidence among the business community that there will be a proper, regular, stable and non-political basis for revaluation. This is a very dangerous move indeed.

This unfortunate Bill contains a rag-bag of ill thought out measures which certainly will not address the critical problem. It does not deserve the support of the House.