Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I welcome this Bill; I also welcome my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh to his first legislative responsibilities—I hope he enjoys them.

I will talk about the element of Part 3 relating to planning—not the very welcome ability to extend construction working hours; I think local authorities had the ability to do this, but the legislation will equip and encourage them to do so on a much more uniform basis for the benefit of the industry, to keep it moving. I will talk principally about Clauses 17 and 18. If you imagine development as a pipeline of activity, the industry has lost time in it; that time was not intended to be lost under the Government’s guidance, but in practice most businesses and developers were off-site by late March and back on-site only in late June. Clauses 17 and 18 are essentially constructed around the proposition that three months were lost and that, therefore, three months must be added to the pipeline, hence the end of the December has been replaced by 1 April.

Although there is a balance to be struck between keeping development moving and allowing for the delays experienced by the industry, I think three months is insufficient for two reasons. First, when the industry has got back to work, it has not been at 100% capacity. To start off with, it was at 50%; some housebuilders had supply-chain problems; even on Friday, a number with which I checked were operating, at best, at 80% capacity. Additional time will be lost between now and the end of the year. Secondly, the three months lost were April, May and June. The three months added are January, February and March. It is obvious that these are not the best months in which to undertake and commence activity on-site in the building industry. I will come back to this in Committee, but will the Government recognise at this stage that more than three months of additional time must be inserted into the Bill?

Also, why do we have such a wide-ranging requirement for “additional environmental approval”? As things stand, all planning permissions which have expired between 23 March and probably the end of August will require additional environmental approval from local authorities to be extended or revived. That is too much. The industry will feel that it has been promised an extension that turns out to be no more than the ability to apply through a new process with its local authority. More should be done. I will question that in Committee.

Finally, on Clause 20, I share my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham’s desire to reinvigorate the process of enacting the reforms in the Rosewell review and getting the Planning Inspectorate’s time for appeals down. It had come down to about 22 weeks; we need to get it down to that and below. We also have to look hard at what these delays are leading to for local plans. There are many reasons for the delays to local plans—it is not just the Covid-19 crisis—but having so many is not good enough in a plan-led system. It is progressively making development more and more difficult.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes]

My Lords, I have not smoked for nearly 40 years and I loathe cigarette smoking, so I gently say to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that he has misremembered my involvement in earlier anti-smoking legislation.

Nevertheless, like my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, I do not think that the Bill is the right place for this amendment. The amendment would affect the granting only of new licences and would therefore discriminate against any premises granted a temporary licence under the Bill. Echoing what my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said, I think that there is a massive danger to our economy of not getting it going again. It is not an overall concept of the economy; these are individual businesses that will go under if they cannot find a way of becoming viable. We should not lumber them with a competitive burden not borne by other businesses that already have pavement licences.

I do not know whether this is a real problem. The Health Survey for England 2017 had only around one-quarter of people self-reporting exposure to second-hand smoke, and only around 15% saying that it was smoke from outdoor areas outside pubs and restaurants. The majority appear not to be bothered. Be that as it may, we should cover that in a consultation and an evidence base that is sought on the normal basis before taking primary legislation to deal with this, if indeed it is an issue, rather than trying to squeeze it into the Bill, which is about trying to make things easier for some businesses to get going again.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on bringing forward this amendment and I support it. If I may presume to say so, we were together as part of the health team in the coalition Government. I am very proud of the fact that we implemented the display ban on tobacco in shops and brought in the ban on vending machines, which was particularly important in restricting the access to tobacco and cigarettes for young people. I also initiated the consultation that led subsequently to standardised packaging.

Between 2011 and 2018, the proportion of adults in this country who were smoking went down, as the noble Baroness suggested. It has gone down from nearly 20% to below 15%. Most encouragingly, among 18 to 24 year-olds the reduction has been largest: from 25.8% down to 16.7%. There has been a reduction of more than one-third in the number of young people smoking—the 18 to 24 year-olds. That is one of the reasons why the impact of this issue in relation to pubs, clubs, restaurants and the like is particularly important for young people who are out and about.

I want to make three points. First, we are in the midst of a health crisis. In a health crisis, which is probably demonstrating to us that one of the underlying factors that has not helped us is the poor underlying health of many people in this country, we must do everything we can to try to improve population health in this country. We have not done enough and need to do more. We must prioritise public health and, by extension, if this amendment were taken on board this measure—modest as it may be in the overall scheme of things—would move us in the right direction.

My second point comes to the point made just now by my noble friend Lady Noakes. It is an important one. This is a temporary measure and would be specific in relation to new licences, but the essence of this Bill is that it will give an opportunity for premises which have previously been licensed for indoors to move outdoors; it gives an opportunity for licensed premises to operate on pavements and the like. In effect, what it says is, “We are extending the public space.” In my view, as we extend the public space, so we should extend the protections for the public that go with it. That means a ban on second-hand, passive smoking for those people who are enjoying that opportunity.

I shall make a third point. I am reminded of when my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and I worked together on a little conspiracy of our own when we were in the other place: the ban on smoking in public places. I was the shadow health Secretary at the time. The nature of our conspiracy was that we secured the agreement of the whips that there would be a free vote. So I very much hope that neither my noble friend nor I will have to vote against a government whip on this matter. The Government could adopt exactly the same approach and give noble Lords in this place a free vote on the amendment. They might also do the same in the other place, and we shall see where we end up on the basis of the arguments. We implemented a ban on smoking in public places on a free vote and, in these circumstances, I think that we might well extend that ban on the same basis for this measure.

[Lord Naseby [V]]

My Lords, this is not a health Bill, as my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out; it is a temporary measure. I am sorry to say this, but I think that this is an emotional amendment—and I speak as someone who is a non-smoker. I would remind your Lordships that tobacco is a legal product that is marketed with awareness packaging. Moreover, we need to take on board that we are talking about the nearly 7 million people in our population who still smoke, plus the 3.6 million who are vaping.

A great deal has been said about smoke curling around people who are eating and so on, but in an outdoor situation, tobacco smoke is highly diluted and dissipates very quickly in almost every atmospheric condition. It is absolutely right that smokers have a responsibility to behave properly towards the people around them, particularly when they are accompanied by children.

The proposal being put forward in this amendment to force pubs and cafés to ban smoking outside their premises—otherwise they will be refused permission to serve drinks—is wholly disproportionate. At a time when all our small businesses are on their knees, struggling to survive under the pressure of coping with Covid-19, I suggest that the last thing they need is further restrictions that will drive away desperately needed customers.

I am not saying that this measure would not be appropriate in a proper health Bill at some point, as soon as the authorities deem it to be relevant to take a particular action one way or another—but to hang this ban on to a temporary Bill that is designed to help every small business, not just those whose customers are not smokers, is entirely wrong in my view.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

59: Clause 17, page 27, leave out lines 18 and 19 and insert—
“(i) beginning with 25 June 2020, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This will provide that where a relevant planning permission has a time limit for commencement of development between 25 June (when this Bill was introduced to Parliament) and 31 December 2020 , the time limit will be extended as provided for in subsection (2).

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I should draw attention to my interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, as entered in the register. As other noble Lords have done, I express my thanks to my noble friends for their discussions following my speech at Second Reading and for the very helpful letter from my noble friend Lord Howe.

I confess that all 13 amendments in this group are mine, but they are to achieve two purposes. The first is to substitute June for April, so extending time limits on permissions and listed building consents. Clause 17 relates to planning permissions; Clause 18 relates to outline planning permissions; Clause 19 relates to listed building consents. In all three cases, the Government have given a three-month extension from December to the end of March. My amendments would take that from 1 April to 1 June. Nine of the amendments are to achieve that in relation to these three clauses. The other amendments, which I shall come to later, are to deal with the circumstances in which those planning permissions should be revived or extended where additional environmental approval has been sought and given.

I start with the question of adding two months to the proposed three months' extension. There is a balance to be struck, and I quite understand the thinking of my noble friend and the Government. They want to reflect the fact that there has been a delay—a serious interruption—to the delivery of the project pipeline for development; equally, they do not want to extend so far as to allow for such developments to be delayed when they could and should proceed. I completely understand that. From my point of view, this is not a probing amendment; it is my assessment of what a practical decision is in the light of all the circumstances.

As I mentioned on Second Reading, practical issues may have been lost sight of in substituting the three months lost—essentially, April, May and June—with three months gained: January, February and March. The most obvious, which I mentioned on Second Reading, is that the industry has lost three months of prime building season in the middle of late spring and early summer and is receiving, by way of compensation, time in the middle of winter. We do not know what seasonal effects January, February and March 2021 will have but if they were particularly inimical to development, it would mean quite a significant deficit in the opportunity for development. From my conversations with housebuilders it is not the case that on returning to site, generally in late June, they were able to do so on the basis of achieving full capacity. Many were starting at 50% capacity; those who I talked to only a week ago were generally at 80% capacity. The pipeline will have lost a further few weeks by the end of December. Adding that together, one might say “If not three months, perhaps four—or even five”. It depends on how one looks at it.

My noble friend Lord Howe has very helpfully said that in any case, all one needed to do is to implement a planning permission. He said: “Digging a trench or pegging out a road may suffice”. I have to tell him that I have looked into this and the courts have often taken a view about what commencement might be. Digging a trench might be sufficient; pegging out a road probably is not. The point is that neither takes account of two significant additional factors. First, when one commences development, often one also commences a legal obligation for community infrastructure levy, so significant costs may then arise. One does not commence a development simply by digging a trench, walking away and saying, “I’ve done what the planning permission requires”. That is not sufficient and, in the eyes of many developers, would be quite an unwise thing for them to do. Secondly, one cannot simply commence development until one has received the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions.

I checked with the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning service and as of the beginning of last week, on 6 July, it began to look at applications received on 15 April for the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions. That is a 10-week delay. Of course, discharge of conditions under these circumstances would generally take eight weeks, so there is an 18-week potential delay. When one begins to add these things together—they are not necessarily in series but may be concurrent—none the less it is far from obvious, in my view, that these particular three months at the beginning of next year are a sufficient addition to the time which developers need to compensate for the time they are losing in the course of 2020.

My point here is that my practical view was, “Let’s add two months”. In this respect, I shared the exact view—which I reflected in asking my noble friend some weeks ago whether he would add six months to planning permissions beyond the end of December—of the Home Builders Federation. It has welcomed what the Government are doing and is grateful for their bringing forward this legislation, but in fact asked for 1 July, not 1 April. I have not asked for 1 July; I have asked for 1 June. I think there is a practical answer somewhere beyond 1 April, in the light of all the circumstances.

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[Lord Greenhalgh]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lansley for speaking to this group of amendments which relate to the extension of planning permissions and listed building consents. These amendments have been supported by my noble friend Lord Balfe. Let me begin by saying that this is a very unusual and challenging time for the development industry, and we recognise that many developers of residential and commercial buildings have had to pause projects.

First, I recognise my noble friend’s comment that the proposed extension for those permissions and consents due to lapse close to 31 December 2020 will represent an extension of only three months, and I take his point about the quality of those three months. However, where a planning permission is due to lapse earlier in the year, for example in September, it would benefit from an automatic extension of closer to seven months. This, we believe, is proportionate.

Secondly, we should be clear that these measures to extend planning permissions and listed building consents are intended to support developers to implement their permissions—that is, to make a start on site—as we know that many of them will have experienced disruptions or delays due to the pandemic. However, it need not take very extensive works to implement a planning permission, and we think it is reasonable to expect starts on site to take place by 1 April 2021. I note my noble friend’s points about the community infrastructure levy, but we have made provisions so that the payment can be deferred and I am sure we will see improvements with regard to the current delays in the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions.

Finally, my noble friend will be aware that we have included powers to extend, by regulations, both the 31 December 2020 date and the 1 April 2021 date to allow more or longer extensions, should that become appropriate. I am happy once again to commit to my noble friend on the Floor of your Lordships’ House that I would be pleased to engage with him on this matter in the coming months as we better understand how the industry is recovering from the impacts of the pandemic.

My noble friend also spoke to Amendments 59, 62, 66 and 68 to Clauses 17 and 18 in relation to the scope of the additional environmental approval process. These amendments would shift the cut-off date for those permissions which require additional environmental approval in order to be extended to April 2021. This date is currently set at the date these provisions take effect, which is four weeks after Royal Assent. My noble friend’s amendment would shift this to 25 June 2020 to cover just planning permissions that have expired. He will understand that where planning permission has lapsed, an extension effectively reinstates the permission, thereby permitting something that otherwise would not be allowed to go ahead. So it is right in those circumstances, having regard to our environmental commitments and obligations, to check whether the existing environmental assessments are still up to date. However, it is important that these provisions capture not only permissions which have actually lapsed, but those which, while technically still extant as of now, in practice could not be implemented within their original time limit. That is why it is right that there is a short delay between this Bill achieving Royal Assent and the cut-off date when these provisions take effect.

Developers with a permission that has not yet expired, but which is due to do so before these provisions take effect, still have the option to implement their planning permissions now, if they can. This would avoid any need to apply for additional environmental approval. If they cannot, it is right that before an extension is granted, there should be a check on whether the requisite environmental assessments remain up to date. The process for doing so is not burdensome, is focused and would be free of charge for applicants.

I hope that with this assurance my noble friend will feel able to withdraw Amendment 59 and will not press the others in this group.

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Balfe and the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Wilcox, for their contributions to the debate and for their positive remarks. I am also grateful to the Minister for his response. He demonstrated that he is trying to work this through as a practical issue. There are powers in the Bill to change the dates for the extension later on by way of regulation. I will consider what he said in his reply before we think about this on Report. It seems to me that if we recognise the strength of the case we should perhaps reflect it in the Bill to some extent, but there may be other and better ways of achieving that than in my amendments to date. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and her three co-signatories to Amendment 15. As she rightly said, it is only by virtue of their bringing forward the amendment in Committee that we had the benefit of a very good and persuasive debate last Monday. They won the argument, as evidenced by the Government’s Amendments 13 and 14 and what they said about the guidance that will be issued alongside the no- smoking condition. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for that.

I might say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, that the Labour Party did not put down such an amendment. I welcome what she said about maintaining positive forward pressure on this vital public health issue, but I remind her that as a result of the coalition Government’s activities—in which we were all participants, including my noble friend Lord Howe—this country was regarded as having the toughest tobacco control regime in the world, perhaps bar Australia, although I think there was a debate about that. The point is to maintain that pressure. The Government’s commitment, which I wholeheartedly support, is to secure a smoke-free England by 2030. The point of this temporary legislation is to support the hospitality and leisure industries, and our debate was about ensuring no retrograde steps away from our objective of banning smoking in public places. We do not want families who expect to go to a public house and have a smoke-free meal to find that they are exposed to second-hand smoke.

Like my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, I would have liked the Government to have gone a bit further and the guidance to have been more specific—particularly on the points he mentioned, which for brevity’s sake I shall not repeat—but I share his view that the Government’s Amendments 13 and 14 are significant victory. He and his cosignatories to Amendment 15 can take credit for that. I welcome what the Government have done, I hope the House will support Amendments 13 and 14 and that, in consequence, the noble Baroness will not see the need to press Amendment 15.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 15, which was so cogently moved by my noble friend and spoken to so persuasively by her co-signatories. In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, said:

“The Government recognise the vital importance of health and safety concerns but we do not believe that imposing a condition to prohibit outdoor smoking would be proportionate.”


He also said:

“The case is now incontrovertible that there are dangers from second-hand and passive smoking.”—[Official Report, 13/7/20; col. 1482.]


I acknowledge that the Government have come part way to meet the amendment, but I hope that, even now, they will change their mind.

I want to address the Minister’s proportionality point, especially in the light of his second statement and this Government’s plans for a smoke-free England by 2030. A new survey conducted between 15 April and 20 June 2020 for ASH and UCL has found that more than 1 million people in the UK have stopped smoking since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. A further 440,000 smokers tried to quit during that period. Younger smokers have quit at a much greater rate than older ones: around 400,000 people aged 16 to 29 have quit, compared to 240,000 aged over 50. The rate of quitting for 16 to 29 year-olds is more than twice the rate for those over 50. This is quite unprecedented and hugely encouraging for the health of our nation. Given what the Minister has said about the dangers of passive smoking—and given that smoking-related illnesses linked to worse outcomes from Covid-19 include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, stroke and other heart conditions—is it not proportionate to want to build on the success during lockdown by restricting smoking in public areas in this way, especially as it applies only to these newly permitted outdoor spaces, as my noble friend pointed out?

As fewer people are smoking after lockdown, is it not right to do everything to attract non-smokers back to the outdoor spaces of our hard-pressed pubs, bars and restaurants by providing a smoke-free environment? We are not yet seeing customers return in great numbers—that much is clear from restaurant owners quoted over the weekend. Would this assurance not be of huge benefit in luring them back?

The Government’s amendments are welcome so far as they go, but they are very much half a loaf. I remember only too well that Forest was the principal opponent obstructing my tobacco advertising and sponsorship Bill, and I am sorry that it has been given any credence by this Government.

Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, is also disappointing. It is very disappointing that Labour is not supporting this cross-party amendment, especially when the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, quotes the research from UCL and ASH, and the latter is supporting Amendment 15.

I am not going to rub salt in the wound by reminding her why I had to introduce the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill in the first place in 2001. I hope, therefore, that the Government will go the whole way and ensure that the adoption of Amendment 15 will be an important staging post towards a smoke-free Britain.

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[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 61 in my name. Indeed, in this group, there are nine amendments, Amendments 61, 62, 64, 68 to 70, 72, 76 and 77, which, in relation to Clauses 17, 18 and 19, all have the effect of moving the extension of planning permissions and listed building consent from three months to four months. I will not, at this late hour, repeat what I said at Second Reading and in rather more detail in Committee. All I want to say is that I very much appreciate that my noble friend the Minister took very seriously what I said in Committee.

We have had some extremely productive conversations on a practical level about what the construction industry’s difficulties might be with the delays in the pipeline. In pursuance of those conversations, I tabled these amendments in the hope that the Minister will tell the House that he is able to accept them. Were he to do so in response to the debate, when the time comes, I will formally move those amendments in my name.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I propose to speak only to Amendment 56, tabled by my noble friend Lady Pinnock and to which I have added my name. It is approximately seven hours since this stage of proceedings began. Throughout, I have been reminded endlessly of two lines of a poem by Robert Frost:

“But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

However, noble Lords should not be apprehensive, because I hope only to make some comments in addition to those of my noble friend, to underline what I believe is the very strong case for this amendment.

At Second Reading and again in Committee, I raised the question of the impact on amenity of extending construction hours. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, will forgive me if I say that I have been a little disappointed in the responses, both from him and his noble friend the Minister who has dealt with other parts of the Bill. It is worth reminding ourselves that an extension could go on until 1 April 2021, could be seven days a week and could extend to a whole day. It does not take much to realise that there is considerable potential for impact on the amenity of households, churches, hotels, hospitals and care homes.

It is helpful to ask why planning authorities imposed conditions for working hours. As my noble friend has already indicated, the purpose is to provide a balance, and part of that balance is the protection of amenity. In every instance, an authority will have been required to reach a judgment about how that balance should be constructed. It seems to me that it follows logically that any increase in hours will tilt that balance against amenity and in favour of the applicant.

The difficulty with what we are considering is that we do not know to what extent that may occur on any one of the occasions in which an extension is sought. That is why I believe it is a matter of necessity to require applicants to produce an impact study to the planning authority, together with plans for mitigation. I believe it can reasonably be argued that that is in the interests of both the planning authority and the applicant. First of all, the planning authority is working against a very tight timetable, and, so far as the applicant is concerned, it is obviously in their interest that as much information as possible can be provided to the planning authority. I believe therefore that an impact study is a necessity.

Indeed, I go further than that: the decision of the planning authority is an administrative one, and any administrative decision of this kind could be subject to judicial review. It would be much easier to resist any such application for judicial review if it could be demonstrated that the applicant had produced the impact assessment to which I have referred and that the planning authority had taken it into its considerations.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

61: Clause 17, page 27, line 23, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment will extend the time limit for planning permissions to which subsection (1) applies to 1 May 2021 instead of 1 April 2021.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

64: Clause 17, page 30, line 41, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for subsections (1) to (5) to expire at the end of 1 May 2021, rather than 1 April 2021.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

68: Clause 18, page 31, line 41, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that a relevant outline planning permission with a reserved matter application time limit as specified under subsection (1) is deemed to have that time limit extended to 1 May instead of 1 April 2021.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

72: Clause 18, page 35, line 32, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for subsections (1) to (5) to expire at the end of 1 May 2021 instead of 1 April 2021.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

76: Clause 19, page 36, line 32, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for listed building consents to which subsection (1) applies to have their time limit extended to 1 May 2021 instead of 1 April 2021.