Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. As Members know, our discussion of this group of amendments is timed to conclude at 5.45 pm, and I want to give the Minister at least 10 minutes to respond. The next speaker will be Mr Jonathan Edwards. I ask him to sit down by 5.35 pm.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I will cut my speech in half in order to give my colleague, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), a chance to speak to her new clause in this group.

I and my party believe that the natural resources of Wales should be harnessed for the benefit of the people of Wales. I am very concerned that any future exploitation of the ground for its mineral wealth, particularly through fracking, would see its riches and the money it generates leaving Wales, without its people benefiting from any of that potential.

The people and communities of Wales still bear the scars of the coal rush, which fired the British state and its empire yet there was an abject failure to leave any of the fruits of its riches in a legacy of prosperity. My new clause 9 was written with that in mind. It will address an anomaly in the devolution system across the British state, as the powers in question are already devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland. If my new clause is accepted by the Government or passed following a Division, Welsh Ministers will have responsibility for all energy-generating planning applications in my country, instead of there being the current arbitrary and insulting 50 MW limit.

Wales is in the bizarre situation of being an energy-rich country in both mineral and renewable resources yet having one of the highest rates of fuel poverty in the UK. According to the Welsh Government, we have the potential to produce double the electricity we require for our needs. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change here in London, we are a net exporter of electricity, yet energy prices in Wales are among the highest. Earlier this year, I presented a simple and reasonable Bill to Parliament to ensure that energy planning policy was devolved to the Welsh Government so that they could plan their energy projects coherently. It sought to put Wales on an equal footing with Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it was open to other MPs to amend it and make their own suggestions. It was an opportunity for the Labour party to introduce proposals from its manifesto, on which the Welsh Government were elected last year, but the vast majority of their MPs in London were strangely keen that Wales should not have those powers.

My Bill had cross-party support, but despite a few notable and honourable exceptions it was voted down. Labour MPs from Wales voted with the Tories. To be fair to the Lib Dems, most of their MPs voted to support the Bill and I look forward to their support later this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 4, line 5, at end insert—

‘(1A) This section does not apply to any planning obligation relating to development—

(a) in a National Park,

(b) in an area designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty,

(c) in an area designated as a rural area pursuant to section 157 of the Housing Act 1985, or

(d) for which planning permission was granted by a neighbourhood development order.’.

Amendment 45, line 18, leave out ‘means’ and insert ‘is assessed by the local authority to be the foremost reason.’.

Amendment 44, line 24, at end insert—

‘(3A) The Secretary of State shall make an order by Statutory Instrument setting out the criteria by which viability is to be assessed.

(3B) An order shall not be made under subsection (3A) unless he has consulted those persons or organisations he considers to be appropriate and a draft of the Order has been laid before, and approved by resolution of, both Houses of Parliament.’.

Amendment 46, line 40, at end insert ‘or,

(e) request that the requirement is to be met in part, or in full, by central government funding allocated for the delivery of affordable homes.’.

Amendment 47, page 7, line 8, at end insert—

‘(7A) Where the local authority has reasonable grounds to believe that the value of the land, on which planning consent with a planning obligation that contains an affordable housing requirement is placed, has risen and the original obligation has not been reasonably met at the end of one year they may—

(a) determine that the requirement is to have effect subject to modifications,

(b) determine that the requirement is to be replaced with a different affordable housing requirement, or

(c) determine that the requirement will be subject to review within a given time period.’.

Amendment 48, line 31, after ‘market’, insert

‘but not including requirements for land on the site to be reserved and transferred at nil cost to a local planning authority or registered provider of social housing.’.

[Mr Raynsford]

I draw attention at the outset to my interests as declared in the register.

It is widely agreed, I think, that clause 6 is unsatisfactory. It is clearly based on conjecture and prejudice, rather than evidence. It was put together in a hurry, without adequate thought about its likely consequences, and there is a wide view that it is likely to have damaging impacts, not least on the provision of affordable housing. Ideally, the clause should be withdrawn. However, if the Government persist in promoting it, it is at the very least essential that it be amended to prevent some seriously damaging impacts on well-established mechanisms for the delivery of affordable housing. The purpose of amendments 3 and 4, which have been tabled in my name, is to prevent the destruction of a mechanism that has been in place for 25 years or more and that has secured a great deal of affordable housing, particularly in rural areas.

The other amendments in this group have been tabled in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on the Opposition Front Bench. They seek further amendments to the clause in order to offset some of its unfortunate consequences. I will not speak to those amendments; I will simply speak to amendments 3 and 4.

The issues were debated in Committee and were raised as a consequence of the evidence presented to us by Dr Nigel Stone of the English National Park Authorities Association. What was clear during the evidence sessions was the overwhelming weight of expert opinion against clause 6. Planning experts from the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association and the Planning Officers Society joined representatives from local government, politicians and officers in condemning the clause as inappropriate and damaging. In his telling evidence, Dr Stone said that, as drafted, the clause could fatally damage the policy of rural exceptions, which has worked, as I have said, for more than 20 years and allowed the provision of affordable housing in a substantial number of areas where commercial housing development would not usually be acceptable.

The policy is called the exceptions policy because, exceptionally, it allows affordable housing—which may be social housing for rent, but could equally be low-cost home ownership—on the clear understanding that that housing will, in perpetuity, be kept available for the needs for which it was produced and that it will never be converted into market housing. The reason for that is obvious to everyone who cares about national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and rural areas where the beauty of the landscape would be seriously compromised by indiscriminate, speculative development. Such areas need people to work to help the local economy and desperately want to keep existing rural communities alive with opportunities for long-term residents to continue to live in the villages in which they were born and brought up.