Localism Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I shall keep my remarks brief because many hon. Members are anxious to attend the funeral of our late colleague, David Cairns. It is appropriate that everyone who can attend that funeral does so with the good will of the House.

Let me begin by thanking Members who have taken part in the scrutiny of the Bill on Second Reading, in our 24 Committee sittings and during the past two days on Report. The level of interest in the Bill across the House and during the 80 hours of scrutiny that it has received so far is testament to its importance and significance in the future of our national life. As well as paying tribute to members of the Committee, who laboured long in the Committee Room upstairs, I thank in particular my ministerial colleagues for all their hard work in preparing and speaking to the Bill, as well as the Whips of both parties who kept us in order and made sure that we considered every clause without needing to curtail our deliberations. I thank my parliamentary private secretary, the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), whose seminal paper, “Open Source Planning”, was the source of inspiration for many of the policies in the Bill. I pay tribute to all my officials and to Officers of the House who have worked hard on what has been a very long and detailed Bill to get us to the state we are in today. I pay tribute to all the efforts that went into that.

I am sure that I speak for everyone who served on the Committee when I pay tribute to the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), who chaired the Committee sittings with aplomb and expertise, thereby making for very good-humoured and good-tempered scrutiny. I think that I speak for every member of the Committee when I say that we have enjoyed scrutinising the Bill in Committee and in the House. It is fair to say that there was never a dull moment. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), sadly, is not in his place—perhaps he has gone ahead of us to the funeral I mentioned—[Interruption.] He has gone to the Dog and Duck, it is said; I know that is a favourite place of his. He treated the Committee to a tour of British history from the Magna Carta to the Chartists. We enjoyed that and were grateful for his contribution.

The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) offered some historical perspectives of his own, some of which were drawn from his experience of introducing the measures we then went on to repeal. The fact that he mostly kept his composure during that time, I think we acknowledged. He had a flair for simile, we noted, comparing Ministers and the Secretary of State to everyone from Draco to Henry VIII to Dr Pangloss and everyone in between. A phrase that might have gained his approval is one that we were not able to offer as frequently as he would have wished—“I agree with Nick.” Perhaps, there will be other opportunities for that. [Interruption.] I am delighted to see that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington is now back in his place.

In Committee, we had contributions of passion and deep experience of local government and community leadership from both sides of the Committee. It would be invidious for me to single out individual members, but the representation on the Committee of people with long experience of local government and civic and community leadership marked the Committee out as having been selected particularly appropriately and well. The Chamber tends to produce more partisanship than is often the case in Committee or below the surface. Of course we have had our disagreements during the past two years, but I do feel that we were able to make substantial progress with the Bill in Committee. It is a landmark Bill.

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

Let me continue in that spirit of partisanship. The Welsh branch of the Minister’s party had a manifesto commitment in the recent National Assembly elections to devolve planning power over energy stations up to 100 MW—up from the current 50 MW level. Will he include that pledge, which was made to the people of Wales only last month, at this late stage of the Bill?

[Greg Clark]

We have a national system for consenting to major infrastructure projects. I have had meetings with Welsh Assembly Ministers on that and no doubt we will have meetings following the election of the new Assembly. I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and Ministers from the Welsh Assembly Government to discuss that point.

As Members know, the main features of the Bill are to establish a general power of competence for local government, to increase opportunities for members of the public to participate directly in local democracy, especially via referendums, to vest in communities new rights to challenge the way in which services are provided and to own assets of importance to their communities, to reform the planning system to remove the regional tier, to permit neighbourhood planning and to establish a new duty to co-operate at the strategic level. We have clarified the functioning of local democracy in London with a degree of consent, as was pointed out earlier today, and we have introduced new flexibilities into the housing system so as to house people more reliably.

At the beginning of our deliberations, on Second Reading and in Committee, I gave a commitment to respond positively to constructive debate and I hope that the House believes I have done so. An hon. Member was kind enough to mention yesterday that I have taken a listening approach, and I expect that to continue when the Bill goes to another place. I have not regarded my task as being simply to carry the Bill through Committee unamended and without influence from the House, and that continues to be my view as it progresses through Parliament.

Thanks to our proceedings in Committee and in the past couple of days we have introduced safeguards over the use of the general power of competence and we have strengthened the duty to co-operate. We have substantially improved the provisions on neighbourhood planning to make them more open and more representative and allow them to cross neighbourhood boundaries. Those are some examples of the progress that we have been able to make.

In a centralised system it is necessary, however paradoxical it may seem, for the centre to lead on localist reform. It does not happen without a positive programme, but the centre should do so in a spirit of co-operation. I will disclose to the shadow Chancellor, who I know is fond of his dividing lines, that the discussions that I have had with the Opposition Front-Bench team have been very constructive. Even where we have not been able to agree totally, we have been able to reach a better understanding of each other’s position and to make improvements as a result.

I had hoped that that might be reflected in both sides being able to support the Bill tonight. We will see in a few minutes, but I am led to believe that that might not be the case, and I regret that. Although we may disagree on some of the particular measures to implement the vision of localism, I think localism is a cause whose time has come. It attracts support from across the political divide. What unites us in this place on localism is greater than our points of difference, which the House of Lords will no doubt continue to pursue.