Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Barwell and Oliver Letwin

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I rise with three purposes, the first of which is to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), whose new clauses I have put my name to. The purport of what he said is clearly right. Those of us who were in on the birth of neighbourhood planning and believe in it are troubled by things that have happened more recently, among which are those that he described. Clearly some remedy is needed.

The only thing that I want to add to what my right hon. Friend said so clearly and well is that the written ministerial statement that we have now seen is an admirable way to deal with those issues. Clearly we will want to ensure that the statement is observed in the observance and not in the breach.

[Gavin Barwell]

It may help the House and my right hon. Friend if I let him know that I have written today to the chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate and to chief planning officers across the country to draw their attention to the guidance.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am delighted to hear that. I wish I could be absolutely confident that the inspectorate will always listen to the guidance it receives from Ministers, but I hope that it will on this occasion. If it does, I believe that the written ministerial statement will do the trick that we were trying to perform with the new clauses. If it does not, I am sure the Minister will come back with further evolutions of planning policy, of which, effectively, the written ministerial statement is a part.

Secondly, I want to refer briefly to the powerful speech made by the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) on new clause 1, which relates to clusters. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), I usually do disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), amiable and enthusiastic though he is, and this is one of the many occasions on which I disagree with him profoundly. It is a very sad spectacle to see our fellow citizens—I have watched them do this—moving from payday lending shops directly into betting places. Nothing could be more deleterious to the things that this Government hold dear and that my party has fought for over many years—since the days when my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) first brought out “Breakdown Britain” and “Breakthrough Britain” to try to restore the stability of family life and workfulness in households that suffer all too often from a desperate effort, as part of a chaotic lifestyle, to improve their lot through betting, which is a snare and a delusion.

It is extremely reprehensible that there has been a focus on building payday lending and betting shops right by each other. It is also extremely reprehensible that betting shops have been built in the poorest areas. If they were built in the middle of the richest areas of our cities, one would object to them much less, because people there can afford to bet. I am therefore very much on the side of the hon. Member for Hyndburn and those, including hon. Friends of mine, who have signed his new clause to try to ensure that the Government come forward with measures to limit such clustering. The reason I shall not join him in the Lobby this afternoon is solely that the new clause would require the Government to do so before going forward with the rest of the Bill, and I cannot accept that. I hope that Ministers will respond by taking forward the spirit of the new clause without that caveat.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I do not think this is the last chance anybody will have to reflect on the planning element, partly because the Bill will be considered in another place and partly because history shows that there is roughly one planning Bill a Session. As we can never get these things right, there is a process of continuous revision. It is also partly because I hope that, as part of the licensing review, the Government will look at the issue of clustering—it might be possible to approach it in that way—and partly because it is open to the Minister to produce the kind of guidance that the new clause seeks without turning that into a precondition for moving forward with the rest of the Bill.

[Gavin Barwell]

indicated assent.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I see the Minister nodding and hope that, apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, we can move by consensus in that direction.

The third reason—the main reason—why I rose was to speak to new clause 5, which I tabled. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and talking through the proposition. I tabled the new clause in the hope not that it would be accepted immediately, but that it would induce the Department to bring forward an array of policies—I doubt it can be just one—to solve a particular problem. The new clause would help to solve it in a particular way, and I hope that the measure might come back in some form as a Government amendment in the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I can be brief: I hope the Minister will resist amendment 14 entirely; clause 12 is an excellent clause.

[Gavin Barwell]

I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on one of the finest speeches I have heard in this Chamber.

First, I will briefly address Government amendment 20. This minor technical amendment clarifies the fact that the Secretary of State is able to require only certain kinds of application or notification to be placed on a planning register.

In the short time available, I will do as much justice as I can to the new clauses and amendments that have been spoken to. On new clause 9, I start by saying to the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) that I would be very happy to sit down with him and other colleagues who feel strongly about the issue. I do not think that we have had the time tonight to air the issues involved properly, but I will briefly say two things to him so that he at least knows where I start from.

First, the hon. Gentleman will know that the current Government, and the coalition Government whom he supported, have done a lot to try to help our pub industry. There is the community pub business support programme, which is providing more than £3.5 million of funding for people to buy their local pub. There is the community right to bid, and people can list their local as an asset of community value, with more than 1,280 pubs listed to date. There has been the scrapping of the beer duty escalator—appropriately, my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) is in his place as the Whip on the Government Front Bench. Beer duty was frozen in the 2016 Budget, having been reduced in each of the three preceding Budgets.

The Government’s starting point on the detail of the new clause—I am happy to discuss it with the hon. Gentleman—is that, from 6 April 2015, permitted development rights for the change of use or demolition of a pub were removed for those pubs that a community has demonstrated it values by nominating them as assets of community value. It is not only the Government who believe that that strikes the right balance. A briefing note from the British Beer and Pub Association makes the point that removing permitted development would not only stop the conversion of pubs to supermarkets and whatever else we would want to stop, but might prevent pubs from doing improvement works to their premises, which we clearly would not want.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Barwell and Oliver Letwin

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)]

This has been an excellent debate, with contributions from 18 colleagues on the Government Benches. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) got to the heart of the matter: the interaction between neighbourhood plans and local plans, and particularly the issue of the five-year land supply. We will want to return to that issue as the Bill goes through Parliament.

We should be honest that there is a tension here. On the one hand, clearly we cannot expect our constituents to put a huge amount of work into neighbourhood plans if they do not hold weight in certain situations. On the other hand, if there is a local authority that either does not have a plan, or that has a wholly deficient plan that does not meet housing need in its area, any Member of this House who cares as passionately as we do about building the homes this country needs cannot allow such a situation to persist for years and years. That is a difficult issue, and I think that the suggestion of a mix of carrots and sticks is probably the right way to address it.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Does my hon. Friend think that there is at least a potential for the NPPF to be used as the reference point under those circumstances?

[Gavin Barwell]

I certainly do, and I think that there are ways we could look at addressing the issue, either through the Bill or through policy changes. I am very conscious of what the problem is, and I am sure that we can work together to find a solution as the Bill goes through.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers) spoke passionately about the green spaces in her constituency. She also sought reassurance on pre-commencement conditions, which I can provide. The consultation paper states:

“This measure will not restrict the ability of local planning authority to propose pre-commencement conditions that may be necessary—for example, conditions in relation to archaeological investigations or wildlife surveys.”

So there is protection there.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) spoke with his customary passion about the importance of custom build. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) asked about support for groups producing neighbourhood plans. We have made £22.5 million available between 2015 and 2018. I can reassure him that that money will go directly to the groups doing the relevant work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) said that the view of his constituents was, “Enough housing, infrastructure required.” I half agree with them; it is absolutely right that we must get a much better linkage between the provision of infrastructure in return for taking more housing, but I cannot agree that we have enough housing in this country. We need more housing, but the infrastructure must go with it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who is such a fantastic advocate for his constituency, spoke with passion about the difficulties it is facing. It is certainly the case that neighbourhood plans must be consistent with the relevant local plan, but he tested the issues in relation to the green belt. If he will forgive me, I cannot talk about the particular plan, because it may well cross my desk at some point, but if I can talk in the generality, we would expect inspectors to test the figure for objectively assessed need and to test whether the circumstances in which an authority seeks to change green-belt boundaries meet the test in the NPPF, which is that they should be exceptional circumstances.