Deregulation Bill

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

I will do so unless anyone wishes to speak.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I hope that we are not going to have another speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, on Amendment 48 when she has already spoken to it.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

No, I have not spoken to Amendment 48.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, the Government’s aim is to promote and support the regeneration of brownfield land and the creation of new, locally led garden cities. This is not news, nor is the fact that Urban Development Corporations can play a key role in driving forward the delivery of large-scale development. This is especially true in areas where previous ambitions have failed to progress.

Urban Development Corporations—UDCs—are statutory bodies which are established under the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980, whose objective is to regenerate designated urban development areas. Urban development areas and corporations are established by affirmative orders, which, if held to affect private interests, can be declared to be hybrid by the House and therefore become subject to the hybrid instruments procedure. Once declared hybrid, the order is open to allow private interests to petition. This has happened in respect of all previous urban development areas and Urban Development Corporations.

A hybrid procedure is time-consuming and can be costly for all parties, involving processes of representations and hearings over what can be a substantial time. The formation of an urban development area or an Urban Development Corporation does not, in the Government’s opinion, impact on the private rights of individuals and businesses in the area. The powers available to Urban Development Corporations are already available to local authorities, notably in development management planning powers and, where necessary, compulsory purchase. We therefore do not consider that the creation of an urban development area or corporation gives rise to a loss of rights. It is the Government’s view that the hybrid procedure is not necessary in the case of statutory instruments establishing urban development areas and corporations, provided that there is proper consultation with individuals, businesses and local authorities in the area concerned before the statutory instrument is presented to Parliament.

The Government propose to create a statutory duty to consult. It would require the Secretary of State to consult,

“persons who appear to … represent”,

residents and businesses, local authorities and anyone else who the Secretary of State considers appropriate. The proposed duty to consult would increase the level of public scrutiny that proposals of this nature must undergo. It would ensure that anyone who wishes to can respond to a consultation and express their views and concerns.

Under the current legislation, there is no statutory duty to consult on the creation of an Urban Development Corporation. When the 1980 Act was passed, the affirmative and hybrid procedure was the only express means for local residents to influence government policy. Establishing a statutory duty to consult provides people with an opportunity to participate early in the policy-making process and voice concerns at the point at which they arise, rather than waiting for a chance to petition once a statutory instrument is laid before Parliament.

The way in which people engage with government has improved and changed greatly in recent years. The advent of new technology means that it is now quicker, easier and cheaper for members of the public to raise their concerns through consultation—more so than by bringing a petition in front of your Lordships’ House. Replacing the hybrid procedure with a statutory consultation duty would reflect this change in the way people now interact with government and the policy process. The Government therefore remain of the view that the negative procedure, subject to a statutory duty to consult, is the appropriate procedure for establishing UDCs.

I should like to place on record my particular thanks to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his participation in discussions on how to proceed on this matter. I know he shares my view that we want to see progress in taking this proposal forward. The inclusion of a 12-month sunset provision, with an expiry date of 31 March 2016, demonstrates our commitment to the regeneration of areas where development is waiting to happen. Any statutory instruments establishing an urban development area or Urban Development Corporation, if laid after 31 March 2016, would revert to the current, affirmative, procedure. It would be for a future Government to propose longer-lasting changes beyond the sunset date, and for the Parliament of the day to debate and decide on such changes. The Government have previously argued that such a change would be appropriate for all the reasons I have described, but we recognise that this issue will not be resolved in the current Parliament.

If the changes we are proposing to the Bill are approved, then, following Royal Assent, the Government will lay a statutory instrument establishing an urban development area and corporation for Ebbsfleet. The Government have already consulted on this proposal, and have published a report demonstrating the support expressed for our proposals in the consultation responses. Given the progress that has been made in recent weeks and months, and the strong case for an Urban Development Corporation at Ebbsfleet, it is perfectly reasonable that we should now move forward with establishing the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation as soon as possible. I therefore hope that this amendment carries your Lordships’ support, and I beg to move.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, if the provisions regarding short-term lettings were unsatisfactory, these provisions coming before your Lordships at this stage of the Bill are unsatisfactory in spades. The amendments that we are now looking at are in substitution of the new clauses reducing the power of Parliament over the order-making power to designate land as urban development areas and to establish Urban Development Corporations. The Delegated Powers Committee received those amendments originally on 25 October, and a memorandum explaining the nature and purpose of the proposals on 26 October, giving it time to report at lightning speed on 29 October. The report severely criticised the original proposals as a breach of the undertaking in the consultation document to obtain express parliamentary approval for these proposals, and called on the Government to withdraw them before the next stage in Committee.

The amendments were accordingly withdrawn but, unfortunately, as the Delegated Powers Committee pointed out in its further report published yesterday, the two new clauses that we are now considering still provide for parliamentary approval to be via negative, rather than affirmative, resolution until 31 March 2016. This means that until that date, interested parties would not have the right to petition against orders designating UDAs and establishing UDCs, as has always been the case in the past, leading to the hearing of evidence in a committee on the matters raised in the petition. The Government recognise that your Lordships would need time to consider and debate such a major reduction of our powers of scrutiny, but are insisting that in the case of Ebbsfleet—the only proposal likely to be affected by these amendments—they must pre-empt a more general debate.

I understand that in the consultation, some three-quarters of the respondents were in favour of this new town and one-quarter of them were against. That does not tell us whether any of the antis would have gone to the length of petitioning, but any who were minded to do so have been deprived of their rights although, as the Delegated Powers Committee points out, the Government gave no indication of this in the consultation. I am keen that Ebbsfleet should go ahead rapidly, but I regret the Government’s assumption that they could trample on the rights of scrutiny and the rights of private interests to be heard. They should have started the Deregulation Bill earlier in the Session or, at the very least, they should have found time for a debate on the proposal in the Minister’s letter that the negative procedure is appropriate for all UDC proposals, subject to a statutory right to consultation. I make no comment on the Government’s argument in the memorandum they submitted to the Delegated Powers Committee that the affirmative procedure leads to uncertainty, delay and a loss of business confidence which acts as an impediment to the process of regeneration that the UDCs are expected to deliver.

We are talking here about taxpayers’ expenditure of £1 billion on the infrastructure of these new towns, the first at Ebbsfleet in Kent, followed by others at Bicester, Ashford, Oxford and Northstowe in south Cambridgeshire. If the advice of David Rudlin, the winner of the Wolfson Economics Prize is being followed, they are the precursors to a further 35 similar new towns, giving a total of some 600,000 new dwellings, that will,

“take a confident bite out of the green belt”.

Ebbsfleet is entirely brownfield, as we have discussed, but that cannot be true of all 40 new towns that are planned. How do the Government intend to amend the National Planning Policy Framework to avoid inconsistency between the NPPF’s severe restrictions on development in the green belt and the new towns policy of taking a confident bite out of it? Or do they intend to make ad hoc decisions in each case as it arises?

Will the Minister say how the new towns will make a proportionate contribution towards meeting the dire national shortage of affordable homes? In the case of Ebbsfleet, Land Securities says that it has plans to develop up to 10,000 homes, but is there not a Section 106 agreement for the company to make a contribution towards infrastructure costs in lieu of any obligation to ensure that a given proportion of the homes are affordable? In his helpful letter of 9 February, my noble friend said that the UDC will not have plan-making powers but will have to determine applications within the context of the affordable housing policies set out in the Dartford and Gravesham local plan core strategies, both of which require private housing developers to deliver 30% of the units as affordable housing.

Land Securities is not building any houses itself, but will reach deals with housebuilders on parcels within the site. The Section 106 agreement that the company reached with Dartford Borough Council does not require any affordable homes, the money being allocated to schools. The local MP, Gareth Johnson, says it would be wrong to suggest that there will not be any affordable homes and that it would be a matter for the local development corporation, but surely that is not the way it works. Since all the land is owned by a single company and its objective will be to maximize returns for its shareholders, the LDC will have no say in the matter, unless it uses its compulsory purchase powers. Will there be anything in the rules of the LDC that will encourage it to use those powers to achieve a proportionate mix of affordable housing? How else does the Government think that Ebbsfleet and the other new towns will make any provision for people who cannot afford to buy?

I also asked my noble friend last week how the Government would ensure that LDCs would provide appropriate accommodation for caravan-dwelling Travellers, whose needs are even less likely to be a priority for developers. My noble friend said that they would be required to plan for the needs of Travellers in the same way as local authorities. Does that mean that they have to start from scratch with a needs assessment? Would it not be simpler for them to reach agreements with the local authorities contributing to their area to assume responsibility for a proportion of the needs that have already been identified and assessed by those councils?