Localism Bill
Debate between Baroness Andrews and Lord Berkeley
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I am very happy to support the amendment and to follow the noble Lord in much of what he said. Amendment 147FC is very important. I feel a bit like a sinner saved, because I remember the many arguments that I marshalled in relation to the 2008 Act about why it was very difficult to put such a clause in the Bill. I hold my hand up and say that it is absolutely right that we do so in this Bill and make it good.
It is very timely to start with a positive definition of the purpose of planning. Planning gets a bad press. It is misunderstood, and most of the time people come across the planning system because it stops them doing things—or they assume that it will. A positive definition stating that its purpose is to achieve sustainable development is very important now.
Perhaps the Minister will say that the amendment is not needed and ask what other purpose planning could have. However, it is because the purpose of planning is obscure that we need a definition. We need it precisely because of the limitations on the definition of sustainability that the Government offer in their presumption in favour of sustainable development. We need a consistent definition that does not retreat from the Brundtland definition, and I believe it is time that we had a legal definition in the Bill that reads across to other legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has already referred to the pressures in the system. There is pressure on land, the greatest non-renewable resource we have, for housing, employment, green space, aggregates and all the things we need increasingly urgently for a growing and ageing population. We need to balance land for housing and all those other demands within a framework that is trustworthy and transparent and works. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I believe that in England we have a planning system that works. A statement that planning is there to sustain the needs of the community within environmental limits serving the well-being of society alongside a sustainable economy is extremely timely and welcome, but the amendment becomes crucial when you set it alongside the limitations of the definition set out in the presumption of sustainable development as published by CLG. When you read it and follow its logic, it destabilises the careful definition of sustainability offered by Brundtland.
This amendment lays a responsibility on our generation not to put at risk future generations in the way we use our resources. Anything that moves away from that balance is extremely regressive, out-of-date and out of tune with what most people want, and that includes the business community. My experience is that good business leaders know that economic growth and sustainability are not incompatible. Indeed, good planning plans for both because they are symbiotic. The argument that growth and sustainability are interdependent is no longer a minority interest or a minority argument. It is mainstream in what planning is trying to do and what the economic and business community is trying to do in terms of its own future. It does not make sense to invest in unsustainable development, and to collude with the notion that there might be a conflict between growth and sustainability is rather irresponsible at this point. If we move to dilute that, we move the clock back and deny credibility to those who do not believe that climate change is a reality, and we undermine effective planning.
However, I agree that the amendment is not perfect. Few amendments are. The text serves very well in terms of its principal definition. I am confident that the Minister is going to accept the amendment or, at least, that he will take it away for further consideration. I have to put on my hat as chair of English Heritage and declare an interest. I believe that the definition can be improved. I would like to see inserted a reference to sustainable development meeting the social, economic and cultural needs of the present. I believe that takes on board the entire well-being that is represented by our landscapes, our historic environment and all the things that make places work for people and make our country so special. I believe that definition of cultural will give depth to the purpose of planning, bring in the nature and wealth of our built environment and give it protection. I hope that Minister will be very pleased to accept the amendment when he replies.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I am very pleased to support these amendments. They are some of the most important ones in the Bill because I get the impression that the Bill somehow dilutes the sustainability agenda and gives rather confusing messages, as we have heard. It is going to encourage more development, possibly in the green belt, if the Times article can be believed. Then we have the nimby’s charter which allows anybody to have a referendum if they want to stop big projects. At Second Reading, I said that if the Secretary of State wants to build his high-speed line to Birmingham, he will have 25 referendum votes against it all the way through the Chilterns. I do not know whether that is the way to build a sustainable railway.
The problem we have at the moment, which I hope these amendments could help dilute or even get rid of, is that over the years we seem to have built up a policy whereby we believe in sustainability unless it costs us more. Then we somehow find a way of saying, “We are going to have to do this even if it costs more” or “If it does not cost any more and is cheaper, it may use up a bit more CO2 but we cannot help it”. For example, we have got the 80 per cent carbon reduction target, which this Government have confirmed. But I suspect that if there are problems with nuclear power stations—I hope that there will not be any but if there are—windmills or something else, the dear old coal-fired power stations will be fired up as no Government will allow the lights to go out if they can pollute the atmosphere with a bit more CO2. The same would happen with transport.
I have just been involved in investigating with Thames Water the tunnel that will collect all the drainage from London and go from somewhere in Hammersmith underneath the river towards Beckton. I discovered that Thames Water is planning to remove all the spoil by road, which I calculated would be about 500 trucks a day from central London. That is about 10 times what Crossrail was criticised for when it was moving spoil from one of its stations. I was told, “This is all very fine. If you want us to be more sustainable and not cause quite so much damage to the residents of London, it will cost someone £70 million more”. I asked where the evidence was for this and was told that the regulator would not allow it. We are still in discussions but it is extraordinary that it can claim that this is a very sustainable solution. It might make the river cleaner, but we need to debate whether it is the right solution. The fallback situation was, “We will use road unless someone can pay us extra”. To some extent, that reflects the national policy statement, to which we will come in future amendments, which basically says that you should use river or railway transport rather than road if it is economically viable. Of course, the figures can be adjusted to suit whatever you want.
The important thing is that even for those big projects, the policies as set out in these amendments need to filter down, as other noble Lords have said, all the way through the planning system to even the smallest planning application and discussion. It seems to me that this is a good way of setting out the structure, about which we can debate many more things later. I join other noble Lords in asking the Minister when we will see this national planning policy framework. I would also ask—again, this will come up later—whether it will be statutory, voluntary or advisory.
On the basis that the House of Commons is required to approve and debate national policy statements, will the House of Commons and, I hope, the House of Lords, be asked to debate this one? There is quite a lot to talk about on this and a lot of questions to be answered. I join other noble Lords is asking this fundamental question. Do the Government accept the need for some comprehensive sustainability definition in the Bill?
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I completely agree with the noble Lord. I think that was a very eloquent exposition of the Government’s dilemma. The Minister addressed the amendment’s frailties in its language and definition, but perhaps the Government could be persuaded to agree in principle that there should be a definition of sustainability in the Bill, which we could debate. It could build on the NPPF definition of the presumption in favour of sustainability, which is not adequate, but it would be a good start for a debate. There is an opportunity now, which may not occur again, to have something which recognises—as so much else is recognised in climate change legislation, for example—that this is a very serious issue for the economic future of the country.
Lord Berkeley
Can I just add to those comments? The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, introduced some very interesting comments about how this might be taken forward, as did my noble friend Lady Andrews. The Minister mentioned the national policy statements. I welcome the fact that the national planning policy document is to be published very soon and that it might be debated in both Houses. What is the relationship between that document and the national policy statements, if and when and as they are developed? Furthermore, with any planning application that falls below the cut-off level for NPSs, the policy still has to take into account the relevant parts of the NPSs. Is that going to stay? What is the relationship between these two documents and the hierarchy? My noble friend suggested putting a basic definition of sustainability in the Bill. Maybe the Minister could put in the more detailed bits of these amendments in the NPPF and then we would see it all together.