National Parks (Planning Policy)

Debate between Lord Hart of Tenby and Jonathan Edwards

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this matter to the attention of the House. Before I do so, I should mention for the Minister’s benefit that I am aware that national park planning is a devolved matter in Wales, so I will speak fairly generally because I do not want to give him an excuse for not answering my questions.

I also put on record my appreciation and recognition of the important role that national parks play in many of our communities. National parks bring in people, boost tourism and contribute to the life of local communities. This debate is not about the relative merits of national parks but about national park planning, and the distinction is important because, whether or not it is perceived, local businesses and householders across my part of Britain feel frustrated, and I know others share a similar view.

I will divide my comments into four brief sections. First, the impact on businesses and jobs; secondly, accountability and confusion within the planning system; thirdly, the affordable housing subsidy, which of course is not specific or exclusive to national parks; and fourthly, the Environment Act 1995. I will address those sections in that order.

First, on the impact on business, today’s debate is fortuitous in some ways, because the Federation of Small Businesses in Wales has produced and published a document entitled “Planning in National Parks.” An early chapter of that document lists 10 key findings, and it is rather frustrating and depressing for people such as me that each of those findings is negative. I will highlight three of the findings. First, the document says:

“Concerns were raised about the perceived lack of accountability of the National Park Authorities’ planning committees and the insufficient scrutiny on planning officer decisions.”

Secondly, it says:

“Interviewees did not believe that the National Park Authorities understood business and economic issues.”

Thirdly, it says:

“There was a perception among interviewees that planning applications submitted in the rest of Wales”—

outside national parks—

“were met with more helpful and constructive advice and a more positive approach to local economic development.”

I have some sympathy with national park planning officers because, in a sense, they are charged only with the implementation of policy, which is sometimes made some distance away from where they sit, but it is important to stress that national parks are a little bit more than simply custodians of the landscape. We are not talking about Yellowstone national park; we are talking about quite densely populated areas. What makes the national parks is the population and businesses that reside within them. That leads me conveniently to my second point, on accountability and confusion.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Fortunately, Wales is a very beautiful part of the world. Some 30% of our country is contained within national parks. What impact does he think that has on economic development in Wales? Obviously, 30% is far larger than the proportion of national park areas in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

[Simon Hart]

I am grateful for that intervention. We can look at it in two ways. First, the inward investment linked to national parks is hugely valuable in of our adjoining constituencies, but—this is my penultimate point—at the moment there is no provision in the planning application system for officers to consider social and economic factors. Ultimately, landscape and ecological factors always take precedence, which is a problem.

Lobbying

Debate between Lord Hart of Tenby and Jonathan Edwards

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that I have seen the report; as I am still a member of that Committee, from time to time I read our reports. I take his point, but if he will forgive me I will come back to it in my closing remarks. If I forget, no doubt he will intervene.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Does my constituency neighbour agree that we also need to look at the relationship between the Government and big business? Earlier this year, the World Development Movement produced a document stating that a third of Ministers had links to finance or energy companies involved in the exploitation of fossil fuels. We have not seen much movement towards creating a low carbon economy in the UK. Does the hon. Gentleman understand why people are concerned?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I entirely respect his view. I sometimes think we underplay the obstacles that outside interest groups have to go through to get to and influence Ministers. We are talking about creating not only new legislation, but legislation on top of an already stringent set of rules. Again, I am not trying to duck the issue, but I will come back to the hon. Gentleman’s point when I come to how we should resolve all these differences.

I turn to what I call “donor lobbyists”, the strongest part of whose argument appears to be the strength of their bank balances. I am interested that the Labour party has made concessions on that, particularly with regard to the influence of trade unions. For some time, a concern among Members on the Government Benches has been how we could have a register of lobbyists that did not include everybody. Members on both sides of the House have made progress on that during this debate.

I shall make only two further points, the first of which is our strange obsession with what we seem to call these days “professional lobbyists” without any real qualification of what they might be, although the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee went some distance towards that. Plenty of people consider themselves to be professional lobbyists but have many other strings to their bows and do many other things for the organisations they represent. Are they or might they be considered professional lobbyists under the proposals? We have yet to find out.

It strikes me as odd that we seem to gloss over some of the big organisations. Tesco has been mentioned, probably unfairly, as an organisation that might not fall under the proposals because everybody knows what it stands for. Actually, that is not right. Tesco might come into this building to lobby on fuel prices, planning, food labelling or any number of issues that come under its jurisdiction. We have to be careful about drawing some random arbitrary line above which some people go. Rather than re-establish public confidence in what we do, we could end up causing great disappointment to those interested in the proposals and do ourselves considerable harm in the process. Likewise, there are plenty of well financed, organised and documented pressure groups—campaigning against or in favour of major wind farm developments or things such as HS2—that are unquestionably engaged in very sophisticated lobbying.

It will not surprise hon. Members to hear that I want more lobbyists; I think they are a good thing and bring great variety and strength as long as we treat them with sufficient recognition and responsibility. Doing anything that might deter people from being able to lobby us pretty well however they wanted would be a counter-productive road down which we should not go.

We seem to have overlooked some existing legislation—the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Whenever I have wanted to know what has been going on in the darkened corners of ministerial offices, I have simply put in a freedom of information request and have probably acquired most of the information I have wanted about who is meeting whom and on what basis. Let us not reinvent something that already exists and to which every member of the public has perfect access.

Lastly, I want to touch on two things. First, there is the positive contribution of lobbying, which some of us seem to have slightly overlooked. Personally, my life would grind to an absolute halt if lobbyists representing all sorts of different groups did not supply me with lots of useful, expert information on a range of subjects and completely free to the taxpayer. If we had to get our offices to pay for that information, the taxpayer might have something to say about that. Let us not for one minute make it more difficult for responsible organisations —charities, industry pressure groups or anything else—to provide us with a constant stream of high quality information, which makes us more likely to produce decent legislation.

Having read the Government’s amendment to the Opposition proposal, I am confident that we are pointing in the right direction on resolutions. We need to avoid reforms that are simply a partial list of names on a piece of paper. We must not over-regulate a responsible industry; that might unintentionally make the life of the charitable sector, in which I have some interest, all the more difficult. If we end up in a situation where people who donate to charities or contribute to charitable activity think that their donations may become the subject of political debate or some public declaration, that might make them, for all sorts of sensible reasons, much less inclined to make their generous contributions to those charities. If the consequence of our trying to resolve a political issue in this building is that we end up deterring people from supporting valuable charities, we will not have done a good job in the eyes of the public, but a very bad one.

The issue gets to the heart of the complexities of the debate. I hope we can reflect on the views held by Members on both sides of the House, and particularly the view of the Chair of the Select Committee. We should turn a deaf ear to calls for great haste to answer the question of why we have not done something.

We can see from a handful of the contributions this afternoon that we could legislate in great haste and make an absolute horlicks of this. It would be much more sensible for us to work our way steadily through the issues raised, particularly that of definition. If we do not do that, rather than having been able to tick a box and sign off an aspect of the coalition agreement, we will have created a situation in which, when the next lobbying scandal comes along—and it unquestionably will—people will ask what the register was all about and why it did not prevent the scandal from occurring. We will have to look them in the eye and say, “Of course it never stood a chance”.

We must take time. The Opposition proposal, dare I say it, is a little cynical; the Government amendment makes a great deal more sense. The Government are right not to be bullied or rushed into producing something hastily that proves incomplete. I have no difficulty, with all my history, in recommending that those who are interested should vote against the Opposition proposal and in favour of the Government amendment.

Energy Powers (Wales)

Debate between Lord Hart of Tenby and Jonathan Edwards

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Edwards]

That would be the difference between me and some of the London parties. I would favour full sovereignty over energy powers. I will address the specific point that the hon. Gentleman raises about the 100 MW level later and will happily allow him to intervene.

The National Assembly’s research service tells us that 39% of applications have been submitted to the IPC, the body that is about to be abolished; 26% of applications are with the UK Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change; and 36% are decided by local planning authorities. Therefore, only a little more than a third of all decisions on applications to do with energy generating stations in Wales are based on planning policy devised in Wales. In my view, that is clearly unsatisfactory, as the purpose of devolution is to reflect Welsh feeling and attitudes. There is no denying that Wales wants to be a greener country and wants to specialise in renewables and the green economy. Indeed, sustainable development is written into the constitution of the National Assembly. However, if two thirds of planning applications are decided outside our borders and our jurisdiction, even though they may impact on us on a day-to-day basis, that is not power devolved, but power retained. I would hope that as part of the respect agenda, the UK Government would want to address that enormity.

The Plaid-Labour one Wales Government, to whom we were proud to belong, were very much in favour of transferring further powers to Wales. They were not alone, with environmental and civic organisations such as the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales and Friends of the Earth indicating their support and including it in their manifestos for this year’s National Assembly elections. The issue was raised during consideration of the Planning Act 2008, when the IPC was first created. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) tabled an amendment in Committee, but it was not moved. The Liberal Democrats then moved a similar amendment on Report.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) told the House:

“We have had detailed discussions, not just with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform but with the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Office.” —[Official Report, 2 June 2008; Vol. 476, c. 518.]

However, there is no easily available record of what those discussions entailed or what the conclusions were. I can only assume that the Labour Government in London denied their colleagues in Wales the right to have the powers I have set out.

To return to the 2008 Act, the Liberal Democrats pushed their amendment to a vote, seeking specifically to exclude Wales from the remit of the IPC. Labour voted against the amendment, and the Conservatives abstained. The Liberal Democrats, of course, voted in favour of their amendment, as did my colleagues and I. Those who voted for it included the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), who is now the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), who is now the Deputy Prime Minister.

Since then, the Welsh Conservatives have published their 2011 National Assembly election manifesto, which commits them to increase the present level from 50 MW to 100 MW. Likewise, Labour in Wales supports raising the bar. Even 100 MW is an arbitrary figure, but it represents a significant improvement on the current situation, specifically in relation to renewable energy-generating developments.

There therefore seems to be cross-party agreement in Wales, and there needs to be progress on the current situation. I can only hope that the London parties’ Welsh colleagues have agreed their proposals with their bosses in London, because there seems to be a divergence between the views of the parties in Wales and what is being said down here in Westminster.

My hope is that the issue can be dealt with in the Localism Bill, and my noble Friend Lord Wigley will table amendments to it in the other place. If the Bill cannot do so, however, I hope that it will be dealt with by the new commission that the UK Government have announced will look into further powers for Wales over the next few years.

I would like to highlight a point that makes a mockery of the current system in my constituency. My constituency is home to TAN8 areas. Those are specific strategic zones, which have been designated by the Welsh Government for the location of large onshore wind projects. Where there is a concentration of such developments, there will understandably be a public backlash, and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) has been vociferous in setting out his concerns about developments in his constituency.

To mitigate such concerns, councillors in Carmarthenshire have proposed that the local planning authority adopt an enhanced 2 km buffer zone between individual projects and inhabited areas, and the proposal has great support among local people. However, even if Carmarthenshire county council adopts the policy, it will apply only to developments below 50 MW. Clearly, many developments in TAN8 areas will be above 50 MW. It is no wonder local people are confused; to be honest, I am confused myself. It is not only my constituents and me who want clarity. During a recent visit by the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs visit to Düsseldorf, we met renewables investors, who informed us that having different planning guidance was a disincentive to invest.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

On that point, the hon. Gentleman will be aware of the proposal for the Atlantic array, which will construct 417 turbines 15 miles off the south and west Wales coast and also have an impact on the north Devon coast. How would his plans take effect when two countries and a number of other parties have an interest in such a major offshore development?

[Jonathan Edwards]

I was going to say something about that in my concluding comments, so if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me—

[Simon Hart]

I can wait.

[Jonathan Edwards]

That saves me having to rewrite my speech halfway through.