Planning and Infrastructure Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Mawson
Main Page: Lord Mawson (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Mawson's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I wish to say something about the housing regulator, because it is absolutely as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is saying. As I explained earlier, in our practical experience, we have built a very successful housing company with local residents, which is trying to join the dots between housing, education, health and placemaking. We find that the housing regulator is constantly getting in the way of the innovation that we, with local residents, need to do, which has local support and a serious track record.
This particular regulator—and I have seen it in other areas as well—is a real problem. There needs to be real thought and reflection about whether these regulators are helping us innovate and find new ways of working—or are they just getting in the way? Of course, they need to ask challenging questions on using the money right, I get all of that. We need to address these issues, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is telling us. It is stopping us in east London doing what we now need to do to take our work to the next stage.
I want to say something about what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the default risk aversion, and how there is a significant risk of that with regulators. There is a lot of merit in those comments. Largely, that stems from the application of the precautionary principle in much of the field of law that we are discussing now. Materially diluting the precautionary principle in a substantial way would have all sorts of troublesome consequences, but, in my judgment, some kind of counterbalance, which is what the proportionality principle is seeking to do, would help temper the effects of that. There is a later amendment in the noble Lord’s name which would seek to modify the precautionary principle in quite a sensible way. But I agree that something needs to be done to ensure that that over-precautionism does not infect the application of these provisions.