National Planning Policy Framework
Debate between Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Martin HorwoodWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I will be quick. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on initiating this hugely important debate on an issue that matters a great deal to communities across the country. I agree very much with his points. I will restrict my comments to two points, because much of what I wanted to say has already been said.
My first point relates to the debate on the Infrastructure Bill, in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) reminded Ministers that the Conservative party manifesto promised that to
“give communities greater control over planning, we will…abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”. —[Official Report, 26 January 2015; Vol. 591, c. 644.]
He cited other comments in the manifesto, but that was a key one.
No matter what our views on the record over the past four or so years, we all have to accept that on a number of levels, the promise of localism has not been delivered to anything like the extent that communities imagined might be the case at the last election. I remember talking a great deal in hustings and public meetings about localism. The promises I made were a reflection of the promises being made by the party I belonged to, but in many cases I have had to apologise to those people, because we have not gone as far as we said we would.
Local decisions are routinely overturned by the Planning Inspectorate, even in minor cases. Indeed, the default position for many councils is an assumption that they will be successfully challenged and will have to cough up. That distorts the decision-making process at local authority level and has caused resentment in communities. I know that it has caused resentment in mine, so I was pleased when the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), responded so positively. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) quoted this in her contribution, but it is worth repeating. He said:
“Let me be absolutely clear: if the existing regime is not satisfactory, as he describes, we will have a regime that is. New guidance will be issued that is stronger and more effective, that defends the interests of local authorities”.—[Official Report, 26 January 2015; Vol. 591, c. 644.]
I sincerely hope that that happens.
When can we expect to see the beginnings of that new guidance? Is it likely to be this side of the election? I very much hope so. For the record, I add my support to the calls of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs for the establishment of a new community right of appeal against adverse planning decisions that run contrary to emerging neighbourhood or local plans. I hope the Minister will also respond to that.
Much of what I have said has been said by other Members present, so I will move on to my second point. I will focus on a recent planning change that has not been properly thought through and is having a serious impact on some communities, particularly my own. Changes to the planning regulations enable owners of office space to convert it almost automatically to residential use. I understand that that was an attempt to tackle a serious national housing shortage, but it is not the appropriate answer.
The effect in Richmond borough—I represent half of it and half of Kingston—has been the loss of a staggering 20% of our office space in the year since the changes were made. One in five office spaces have become residential in just one year. It is not empty premises that are being converted; small businesses are being moved on by landlords for obvious commercial reasons. I do not blame those landlords for that, because the upside of making those changes is tremendous, but we are being left in a position where small and medium-sized enterprises—the biggest providers of jobs in our economy—are unable to find affordable places from which to operate. There are other knock-on effects, too. When businesses are lost, so is daytime trade. A lot of our traders in small shops are already feeling the pressure and tell me so regularly.
I have the honour and pleasure of representing a network of vibrant, dynamic communities, and the changes genuinely threaten their future. We do not any more than anyone else want our areas—in my case, Barnes, Kew and Ham—to become dormitory zones, but that is the direction of travel as a consequence of this ill-thought-through change. Clearly, many commercial premises lend themselves to conversion to residential use, but it is crazy to make that the default position in law. Those decisions should rest with local elected representatives who know their communities inside out and are capable of making informed decisions.
Martin Horwood
Exactly the same phenomenon is happening in Cheltenham. We recently lost two corporate headquarters, both of which have been converted into exclusive retirement flats that are not really available to local people. It seems to me that, if we are not careful, there is a risk that attractive communities such as ours are in danger of becoming dormitories.
[Sir David Amess in the Chair]
Zac Goldsmith
I very much take the hon. Gentleman’s point. He made a thoughtful speech earlier, all of which I support and agree with. That is exactly the point. If his community is attractive, mine is even more so, so the threat is double. We are seeing change happening on an alarming scale. A viable community is a mixed community, with traders, offices and people, and busy during the day, during the evening and at weekends. There is a risk of communities such as mine morphing into dormitory zones as a consequence of these policies.
The current arrangements are clearly flawed. I have written to the Secretary of State but am yet to receive an answer. Nevertheless, I strongly urge the Government to rethink the arrangements that I have just described.
New Nuclear Power
Debate between Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Martin Horwood(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Martin Horwood
Clearly not, because in the case of onshore wind, for example, there are many competitive developers developing different varieties of technology. It is a competitive market still, in a way that nuclear, as I shall explain, is not.
The goal, of course, is to provide clean, sustainable and cheap energy while meeting challenging but critically important greenhouse gas reduction targets. Do these contracts for difference represent a subsidy? Well, as the Treasury has confirmed to me in a written answer, yes, of course they do. Every energy bill payer is a taxpayer in their time off; but subsidy is justified for renewables, for all the reasons I have given. However, would it not be extraordinary if into this exciting, young, diverse and competitive energy market, a 56-year-old freeloader—a tailgater, a leftover from another era—tried to slip unnoticed and pick up all the same kinds of advantages and support? Would it not be even more extraordinary if that old freeloader was not even represented by a diversity of competitive companies, but just one or two; and more extraordinary still if the most significant of those turned out to be the state-nationalised energy supplier of another country, already subsidised by its own taxpayers?
That is precisely what is happening with the nuclear industry, and what is more, the level of support—the precise contract for difference and the strike price for specific energy sources—is being negotiated behind closed doors as we speak, before the relevant legislation has even passed through this House. The details are set to be revealed to us only after the event—after the deal has been sealed.
Martin Horwood
I first give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith).
Zac Goldsmith
I hate to jump in front of the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, but I am pleased to be allowed to intervene. Only a couple of days ago, EDF issued a warning, effectively, to the Government that unless they guaranteed it profitability—or words to that effect—it would follow Centrica’s lead and abandon nuclear in the UK altogether. If that is not a request for a subsidy, it is hard to imagine what is.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. In fact, the energy chief executive of Electricité de France, Vincent de Rivaz, told the Financial Times:
“the only thing missing is the contract for difference. Once we have that, we’ll have a compelling investment case to attract partners into the project”.
In other words, “If you don’t subsidise us, there is no business case.” Even with the prospect of subsidy, the business case is not that compelling. On Monday, Centrica pulled out of its partnership with EDF, writing off a cool £200 million and launching a share buy-back scheme to return another £500 million of unused capital to its investors. Like RWE and E.ON before it, and like any sane investor in my view, it has decided that it is not going to touch these new nuclear plans with a bargepole.