Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tom Blenkinsop and Jason McCartney

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to ensure that there are sufficient prison places to accommodate people who receive custodial sentences.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

8. How many people are in prison in England and Wales.

Planning Reform

Debate between Tom Blenkinsop and Jason McCartney

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I take on board your comments and will be as succinct as possible. I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and congratulate him on securing this important debate. The Government’s planning reforms are of great importance on Teesside and in East Cleveland, and I intend to discuss their effect in those areas and raise the concerns of my constituents and local government leaders.

Planning policy makers have the difficult job of reconciling conflicting interests, but the Government’s approach to planning policy, particularly their Localism Act 2011, is distinctly centralist. The national planning policy framework ties the hands of local planning committees and removes much of their discretion in making decisions about planning applications based on local conditions. On Teesside, Stockton-on-Tees borough councillors, both Labour and Opposition, have been particularly vocal about that. Stockton council is not in my constituency, but its members have made several very valid and interesting points.

In November 2013, Stockton council passed a motion calling for an urgent review of the NPPF. It resolved that the framework effectively removed planning control from the local community and placed it in the hands of developers. It also made the interesting and valid point that that is coupled with massive reductions in available funding for the remediation of brownfield sites and that local authorities are effectively forced into permitting development on greenfield sites. A Thornaby Independent Association councillor questioned the reason for the very existence of a planning committee under the NPPF regime. Despite that, Stockton council has been under continual attack by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) for its planning decisions. He branded the council’s leader “Bob the Builder”, despite the fact that since May 2010 the hon. Gentleman has not once objected to a planning application, and his Government are coercing the council into making the decisions. When Yarm councillor Mark Chatburn defected from the Tories to UKIP, he cited as one of his main reasons the hon. Gentleman’s silence prior to planning decisions and his refusal to utter a word of criticism of the NPPF.

It is not just Stockton council that finds itself under attack. Redcar and Cleveland borough council has been subjected to criticism about its draft local plan from local Liberal Democrats. I have submitted a response to the consultation on this document, as has my colleague Anna Turley, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Redcar, who urged the inclusion of a commitment to a traditional pier and stressed her opposition to proposed developments in Marske.

Confusingly, however, despite criticism by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) and Redcar and Cleveland Liberal Democrats of the council’s draft plan in the press and their focus leaflets, they have not responded to the consultation. Will the Minister explain why the Redcar Liberal Democrats have failed to respond to this consultation when Ministers repeatedly tell the House about the importance of having a strong local plan? Does he believe that their silence is indicative of a belief that local plans are unimportant, not locally controlled and subservient to diktats originating in Whitehall?

[Jason McCartney]

On a point of order, Mr Gray. Surely the general atmosphere of Westminster Hall debates is about raising issues on behalf of constituents. We are listening to a blatant political speech, which names particular people. What is your judgment on that?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

That is not a point of order. I have listened very carefully to all the speeches made in the Chamber this morning, and if they were out of order, I would have made the hon. Member concerned know that they were. So far, the hon. Gentleman who is speaking is making political points, and he is perfectly entitled to do so in a Chamber such as this.