Localism Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, always moves his amendments superbly, and I am fascinated by them, although I heard it elsewhere than in the Chamber this evening, and I apologise for that. But I think that he does not look at this matter from the point of view of people being elected. Ever so many people are elected simply because they have always had some pet subject that was very much of local interest, and that is what got them elected. Any of those people, under this amendment, will find themselves being accused or blamed for the fact that they fought in that way. I am thinking of the Member of the House of Commons, who was elected on the single issue about the hospital in Worcestershire, and elected not once but twice on that issue. Would we have all condemned him if he had shown a particular interest in the hospital in Worcestershire? It is unrealistic to believe that people could be completely opposed to something that they had fought for for years.

The other side of that is that anyone sitting on any planning committee should do so with an open mind. If they do not have one, they have no right to sit on that committee and they should declare it as such. That should deal with the matter, rather than this amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

I declare an interest, since it is Third Reading, or redeclare an interest as a member of Pendle Borough Council, which has a local planning authority on whose planning committee I sit.

I smiled when the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, got into a little bit of trouble for trying to use his native Bradfordian flat irony in your Lordships' House, which is something that I also get into trouble about for the same reasons. I sometimes think that we should run a campaign so that we have a means of telling Hansard to insert a smiley at appropriate places, but I suspect that that is a campaign that I will not win in my lifetime.

I regret the fact that I did not get involved more in this issue in Clause 25, as it now is, earlier in the passage of the Bill. It is not completely satisfactory as it stands, but I think that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, would make things worse. I shall explain why in a minute. I do so not from his position as an eminent lawyer who knows about things like predetermination, predisposition and perhaps predestination as well, I do not know—or perhaps not. I come from the point of view of how these things are now looked at in local government. What people have not really been talking about is that within local government there is a general belief at the moment that there are two types of issue. There are those that people say are in some way quasi-judicial, or involve things like appointments and disciplinary hearings, as well as planning and licensing, whereby the approach of councillors has to be less predisposed than on other matters. When I got back on the council eight years ago, I spent the whole election campaign speaking about the number of empty, boarded-up houses in my ward. I thought that the position had deteriorated appallingly in the six years I had not been a councillor. The electors actually agreed with me, for once. I have spent a lot of the eight years since then working hard on the council to do something about that problem. I am totally biased on this matter; I think that it is an appalling problem, and I campaign on the council and outside the council to try to solve it and make no bones whatever about that. But if a planning application came up in relation to one of those houses, I would step back and regard it and treat it as a planning application. That is quite well known within local government, although perhaps not as well known in some councils as it should be—but it is the case. Therefore, there is a problem here in that both the Bill and the amendment are broad-brush and do not make that distinction between different types of issue, which are certainly well understood within local government.

I have problems with the words predisposition and predetermination. It may be that in the courts of this land they are well understood, but I do not believe that most councillors would understand those words if you put them to them. The word that is more used in local authority government in relation to that kind of problem is fettering. Councillors are told that they must not fetter their discretion when it comes to things like licensing and planning applications. That is the word that is used—but fettering includes both predisposition and predetermination. The attempt to pull back from the straitjacket that councillors are in at the moment is well done.

I do not think that the position is well understood, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said on Report and said again today, but one problem is that different councils apply different rules. In some cases, when planning applications are submitted—that is probably what we are talking about most here—councillors are banned absolutely from speaking to anybody, including residents, applicants, objectors or the local press. Some councils are absolutely draconian in doing this: one is not allowed to talk to anybody unless one is in the presence of a planning officer. That is totally unrealistic on many councils that do not have lots of spare planning officers to wander around with councillors who are talking to people on their patch.

All this did not originally come from the courts. I particularly noticed it because I was not a councillor for six years and during that time, between 14 and eight years ago, the whole regime changed. It came from decisions of the Local Government Ombudsman, where there were complaints that councillors had made up their mind on planning applications before the applications were dealt with. It also came from references to the standards authorities, particularly the Standards Board for England. That is where this whole regime within local government has come from.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, made the point that councillors are different because they are elected. Therefore, the regime that has to apply to councillors as opposed to other public officials and people serving on tribunals and so on is different because they are elected. Very often they have fought election campaigns and taken part in local campaigning. We have examples from around the country. A market town provides one classic example. A particular political party had campaigned vigorously against the redevelopment of a town centre that involved a big supermarket as the core of that redevelopment. All its councillors—the party had swept the board—were banned from taking part in the part in the decisions once they were elected because it was said they had fettered their discretion because they were part of a party which had won elections on that basis. Clearly there is a huge conflict here between local democracy and fair decision-making. Electors cannot be expected to understand that.

Regarding the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I would say that there is a lot of talk of bail hostels. As long as a bail hostel is small and is confined to an existing house, I do not think it needs planning permission. It is not a good example in that sense, but I understand the point made by the noble Lord. We have all had to deal with a very difficult application where a lot of residents have been strongly opposed to it, yet it has actually been right. That is when councillors have to gird their loins and do what is right. They do not always do it, but that is democracy.

The amendment of the noble Lord is an admirable attempt to clarify the position. Subsection (2)(c) of the amendment states that,

“an earlier statement or conduct by the decision-maker that amounts to predetermination shall be taken into account and given such weight as is appropriate in the circumstances of the case”,

I do not believe that even local authority lawyers will understand that sufficiently to give clear advice to their councillors, and councillors certainly will not understand it because they will not understand what amounts to predetermination. The words,

“given such weight as is appropriate in the circumstances of the case”,

are a recipe for a lot of lawyers to earn a lot of money when matters come to court to determine what they mean in the circumstances of a particular case. I do not believe it is a useful check on what one does in a particular circumstance that happens locally. Therefore, I do not think the amendment of the noble Lord provides clarity. In a practical sense, at a local level, it will make matters a lot worse, with no clarity.

The problem is that council lawyers are well known for being top of the league of people who err on the side of caution on pretty well everything. If the House were to pass this, it would result in no change to the present position, in which it is the councillors who are totally fettered from doing the job that people elect them to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Hart of Chilton, said that if councillors are given the advice that they cannot say or do anything or take part in any discussions before it goes to a planning committee, it is bad advice. All I can say is that if it is bad advice, it is universal bad advice. Given the choice of two not wholly satisfactory wordings, I very much prefer that of the Government.

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[Lord Pannick]

I understand the point and am grateful to the Minister. However, the clause introduces clarity by amending the common law, which the Minister is concerned to maintain. The clause does not maintain the existing common law rules, which the Minister considers entirely adequate. The clause excludes from consideration anything that is said or done prior to the council meeting at which the issue is to be discussed, however extreme the previous statement may be. I entirely accept that what the councillor said prior to the council meeting may not be determinative of whether there is unlawful predetermination, but it must be relevant. That is the objection to Clause 25: it purports, in the Minister’s words, to restate the common law, which the Minister regards as entirely appropriate and unexceptionable. What it actually does is amend the existing common law in a way that will prevent real cases of predetermination being brought and succeeding.

Real concern was expressed in this debate that it is absolutely vital that local councillors should be able to express their views on matters powerfully and strongly if they wish. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Greaves, made this point. I entirely agree with them that that is the common law position. The cases make it absolutely clear that local councillors deciding any matter are not impartial in the sense required of a judge; they have political allegiances, their politics involve policies and they are entitled to express their views—of course they are. The case of Lewis v Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council in 2009, covered from page 83 of Volume 1 of the Weekly Law Reports, is the leading Court of Appeal judgment. It says that any local councillor who expresses his views powerfully and strongly on any view is not guilty of unlawful predetermination so long as he is prepared to keep an open mind when he goes to the council meeting.

The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, and the noble Lord, Lord Snape, asked for reassurance in relation to the role of party groups and party whips in local government. That, too, has been considered by the courts. In the same case of Lewis v Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, the Court of Appeal approved an earlier judgment in 1985 by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf—then Mr Justice Woolf—where he said:

“I would have thought that it was almost inevitable, now that party politics play so large a part in local government, that the majority group on a council would decide on the party line in respect of the proposal. If this was to be regarded as disqualifying the district council from dealing with the planning application, then if that disqualification is to be avoided, the members of the planning committee at any rate will have to adopt standards of conduct which I suspect will be almost impossible to achieve in practice”.

[Lord Greaves]

I apologise for intervening, but I wonder whether the noble Lord is aware that there is a very widespread view within local government, which in my view is widespread in its application, that on things that are thought to be quasi-judicial like licensing and planning applications there is no party whipping. There may be discussions, but no party whip is applied.

[Lord Pannick]

I understand that, of course; I am responding to the point made that if our amendment were to be carried, this would in some way affect the existence of that whipping that does take place in local government—those elements of party control that are effective. Let me just complete the citation from Mr Justice Woolf: he concluded that there is no objection to any of this so long as, when the councillors come to the council meetings, they have an open mind in the sense that they are prepared to listen to the competing arguments.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was rightly concerned that we should do nothing that should enable lawyers to make lots of money out of all this. That is a very laudable objective. My concern is that Clause 25 is so unclear that it will inevitably provoke litigation, and it will do so because the Minister says that it is not changing the common law but merely expressing it, whereas its terms manifestly do change the common law.

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[Lord Tope]

My Lords, neither the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, nor the noble Lord, Lord True, were Members of your Lordships’ House when some of us spent many happy hours—hours and hours—dealing with what I think was the first part of what was then the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. We argued for hours about petitions and petition schemes. I recall my noble friend Lord Greaves—who I think I have just managed to shut up for a few moments—actually bringing in some petitions to his council so that we could see that they are rather different from petitions that come to Parliament in their general layout and form.

We had a very listening Minister then who listened and indeed made many amendments to what was proposed, but we were still left with pages of prescription about how councils should collect, receive and deal with petitions. We heard that most councils did not have such a scheme. What actually emerged, and it was a legitimate criticism, was not that most councils did not have a scheme but that most councils had not thought to put it on their website, which of course they should, but that is rather different from saying that councils do not receive or deal with petitions.

I have much sympathy with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said in moving his amendment. The crucial difference between us is that I believe he was talking about good practice and I do not believe, especially in a Localism Bill, that it is for your Lordships’ House to be prescribing in legislation what should be disseminated as good practice. I still bear the scars of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, and that, I am afraid, tempers very considerably the sympathy with which I listen to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I will just add a few brief things. My noble friend reminds me of one or two things which I had thankfully forgotten about. I was trying to remember how many amendments I actually put to this chapter of that Bill when it came. That is also something I had forgotten about, which is something that happens.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, quite rightly said that councils have to welcome and encourage petitions. But what is really important is the seriousness with which they treat them and deal with them when they come. You can set up as many bureaucratic, complex, legalistic schemes as you like, but if people do not treat the petitions seriously it is just going through the motions and wasting time and energy. If people treat petitions seriously you do not need a complex, bureaucratic, top-down—and, I have to say, pretty patronising—piece of legislation like Chapter 2 of Part 1 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. I note with some wry amusement that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is desperately trying to hang on to this classic piece of new Labour nonsense, which frankly has not improved the situation of petitions in any council in the country. Those who take them seriously, take them seriously; those who do not, do not.

This is eight pages of primary legislation telling councils in great detail how to deal with petitions. I, along with my noble friend, pay tribute to the Minister at the time, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, who listened to a great deal of what we had said—it was 12 pages of nonsense before we started, and between us we managed to persuade the civil servants and the powers that be in the then Government at least to take some of it out. As I told the noble Baroness at the time, if the Government simply want to tell councils to have a scheme for dealing with petitions that deals with them seriously, they could do so in half a page of legislation, not eight pages. I have been through this and reminded myself of the huge amount of nonsense in it. I will not detain—or should I say entertain—your Lordships’ House with any more of this tonight, but it really does deserve to go.

The one point that I will raise relates to Section 16 of the 2009 Act, which is the requirement to call officers to account. I do not know how often, if ever, this has been used since this part of the Act was commenced. At the time, we had a long debate, and in our view it was totally inappropriate for officers of the council to be hauled up and held to account before the public in this way. The people who should be held to account are the elected councillors: those who run the council and who have been elected by the people to be responsible and accountable to the people. Clearly, they will need support from officers, and if officers are not performing their jobs properly, the elected councillors are the ones who should take a grip of the situation and sort it out. That is a fundamental principle, in our view, but we could not persuade the Government at the time that that was the case. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Shutt is, I assume, going to resist this amendment.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have spoken on this matter. Clause 46 of the Bill repeals the duty on principal local authorities in England and Wales to have a petitions scheme and the associated provisions. Amendment 15 would omit this clause, therefore reinstating the duty, and Amendment 49 would then amend the original legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to when he mentioned the eight pages. Incidentally, I have a note that there would be still four or five pages left of that, including the requirement to call officers to account. So a lot of it would still be there.

While the intention behind the amendments to ensure that councils treat the receipt of petitions sensibly and appropriately is laudable, I am not persuaded that reinstating this prescriptive and burdensome duty, albeit in a revised form, is either necessary or desirable. The revised duty proposed would remove Section 11 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, which provides for principal local authorities to have petition schemes, but it is clear that they would continue to need such schemes, given that Amendment 49 includes several references to petition schemes. Even with this change, the revised duty would mean a significant new burden on local authorities. The effect of subsection (6) of the proposed new section is that the statutory petitions schemes would have to go into far more detail than is currently required about how particular categories of petition will be treated.

In addition, the extension of the statutory duty to all categories of petition—including mayoral petitions and council tax petitions—which the amendment creates, will create further additional burdens, as a scheme would then need to provide for different processes for different types of petition. To reinstate the current overly prescriptive duty not with a clean sheet but with a confused mishmash of some retained elements, with some changes and some provisions dropped, is not at all helpful. We trust local authorities to make the best choices for their local areas and to respond to residents’ concerns in a locally appropriate way. However, how that looks should be a matter for local discretion, not central prescription.

We simply do not believe that we need to reinstate this duty in order to force local authorities to have a petitions scheme, any more than we believe that we need to tell local authorities how to respond to petitions from their own residents.

The noble Lord, Lord True, asked whether the Government still support the concept of petitions. Let me make it clear that they absolutely support and encourage the use of petitions but at a local and not at a national level. It seems to me that people want to put up a petition in a post office or whatever. They do not want to have to scratch about wondering what the proper way to organise a petition is for that council. They want to get on with the petition, get the names together and get on with it. That is how it is in democracy and how it is in local areas. In the circumstances, I trust that this amendment will not be pursued.

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Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

50: Before Clause 109, insert the following new Clause—
“Sustainable development: duty to publish guidance
(1) The Secretary of State must—
(a) publish guidance on the meaning and application of “sustainable development”, and(b) take such steps as he considers necessary to bring such guidance to the attention of relevant bodies.(2) For the purposes of this section “relevant body” shall in particular include—
(a) a local planning authority,(b) a county council in England that is not a local planning authority,(c) the Secretary of State when carrying out functions relating to applications for development consent,(d) a qualifying body as defined in section 61E(6) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and(e) a body or other person that is prescribed or of a prescribed description.”

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, we move back fairly quickly to discuss Part 5 of the Bill on planning. My amendment is grouped with a Labour amendment, Amendment 51. This is my fourth attempt to put a reference to a definition of sustainable development in the Bill. We have the end of this Bill in sight in your Lordships’ House, and I should like to take this opportunity, specifically in relation to sustainable development and the other planning provisions in the Bill, to thank the Ministers in this House; Greg Clark, the Minister in the Commons in charge of the Bill; and the team of civil servants responsible for the Bill for what seems to have been an enormous number of discussions and careful consideration that they have given to the points I and my colleagues have raised in relation to planning.

As for this issue, I believe that there was a willingness to consider it seriously. However, it has again fallen prey to the legal advice that Ministers have received—like their predecessors in the previous Government—that the Bill is not the place to provide for sustainable development. I regret this but, nevertheless, we are where we are.

The amendment sets out what we understand—from discussions with the Government and from government statements in all our debates on sustainable development and the national planning policy framework in recent weeks—the Government are going to do. We believe and sincerely hope that they are going to set out a better and fuller definition of sustainable development within the NPPF. It is worth going back to what the draft NPPF says. Paragraph 9, headed, “Delivering sustainable development”, states:

“The purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development. Sustainable development means development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”—

the 1987 basic Brundtland definition. The draft NPPF continues:

“It is central to the economic, environmental and social success of the country and is the core principle underpinning planning. Simply stated, the principle recognises the importance of ensuring that all people should be able to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life, both now and in the future”.

That, as we have all recognised, is okay so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.

In particular, it does not recognise that the definition and strategy for sustainable development moved on significantly in the 2005 sustainable development strategy, Securing the Future, which the present Government have assured us on a number of occasions is still valid, that they are not in any way revoking it, and that they still stand by the strategy. The 2005 strategy contains a number of basic definitions of sustainable development and the Labour amendment in this group sets them out. While I should not, technically, speak to that amendment until it has been spoken to by the Labour Party, I feel some proprietorial right to do so, given that it is, as far as I can see, word for word, identical to the amendment that I moved on Report. I am flattered by the fact that the Labour Party has tabled that amendment again, and I regard it as being a compliment on my parliamentary drafting. Perhaps I should make it clear that I regard that as requiring an ironic comment. Never mind— perhaps it requires what I might call a “Sewel smiley”. If we can have Sewel Motions, perhaps we can have Sewel smileys. However, it is interesting that, yet again, the Labour Party seems to be one step behind what we are doing on this Bill.

My amendment on Report was to an extent probing, but its essence, and the essence of what has been put forward across the House—both in the debates on the Bill and on the national planning policy framework—is the three pillars of economic, social and environmental considerations; the need for balance between them; and the importance within the planning system of achieving that balance.

I was interested to read and watch on the television what Greg Clark said when the House of Commons debated the NPPF on 20 October. He stated:

“There has been some suggestion that the proposals represent a fundamental change in what the system is about, but they do not. They will, quite rightly, balance the environmental, the social and the economic, and there is no change in that regard”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/11; col. 1082.]

At col. 1084 he said:

“It was necessary to update the 1999 strategy in 2005. Six years on,”—

that is, in 2011—

“there are some respects in which thinking on sustainability has progressed. For example, there is the idea that the separate pillars of the economy, the environment and the social aspects of sustainability can be traded off, one against the other. Some people argue—and I think there is some merit in doing so—that that is a rather defensive position and that one should be looking for positive improvements to the environment, not simply to trade-off. That is very much the thinking in the Government’s natural environment White Paper, which talked of a net gain for nature”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/11; cols. 1084-85.]

I regard that as extremely helpful and encouraging. I know that the Minister will have some difficulty in saying too much, or indeed anything at all, about what the Government may be intending or wishing to put in the NPPF at some point in the future after they have considered the consultation on it. The consultation has closed. There have been 14,000 responses, which are more than a few, and I understand that for the best possible reasons the Minister cannot pre-empt the government response.

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[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the initial expectation in the NPPF was that there would be a balanced approach to this. There are the three legs that are really relevant to planning: economic, social and environmental. Brundtland, of course, includes science, and we have been given lots of other ideas of what it might include. If I can just leave it at that, we expect this to be a balanced approach to sustainable development and we recognise that there are elements that are more reflective of the planning system. Then we will have to wait and see what comes out of the discussions.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for that reply from my noble friend the Minister, who I think went as far as she could—in fact, I think she pushed the limits a little further than some of her more cautious advisers might have liked. I hope that what she said turns out to be satisfactory in the long run.

I just want to say another couple of quick things about sustainable development. Going back to what Greg Clark said in the House of Commons debate on the NPPF, which I think is extremely important, this is not just about balance. Balance is very important indeed, but really good planning can enhance all the three legs, or pillars, or whatever they may be called, of sustainable development. That is possible with good planning. Clearly individual decisions may be balanced one way or another, but overall there has to be balance and enhancement, particularly of the environment. Again, I hope that the issue of environmental limits that you cannot go beyond will be addressed in the NPPF.

Listening to this debate, I was musing that we have not only had the four debates on sustainable development in this Bill and the two NPPF debates; the debate seems to have gone on over the years. I was thinking back to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, the Planning Act 2008, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, when there was a willingness of the then Labour Ministers to think about what they could do about putting this into the Bill. In the end, however, they said, “No, it cannot be done, for all the reasons that have been put forward”, and all the legal reasons put forward by their advisers. Having struggled against a Labour Government on four of these Bills and trying to find our way through this one under the coalition Government, we are where we are.

Will the outcomes be satisfactory? Will we look back on these debates and say, “Yes, the NPPF is okay, despite the inauspicious way in which it was launched upon the world and despite a lot of the unfortunate wording within it”? Will that all be sorted? Will we get a document that will work? All I can say is that I hope we will. We have a lot of good intentions from the Government and from Ministers, not least my noble friend the Minister here. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches will certainly be keeping up the pressure, and we simply ask them not to let us down. On that basis, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 50 withdrawn.

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, becomes flattered again, I should say that this was another handy vehicle to make sure that we got this on the agenda.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, if the Labour Party really needs a new parliamentary draftsman to write its amendments, I might be prepared to offer my services.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

They would be very welcome.

The Bill is about to leave the House when we have no certainty that there will be any transitional provisions, let alone what those provisions might look like. The changes to our planning system, the demise of regional spatial strategies, the introduction of the duty to co-operate, the introduction of neighbourhood planning, together with the NPPF and the proposed presumption in favour of sustainable development, represent a major upheaval to the planning system. The key continuing feature—we support this—is the significance of the local development plan, which, subject to material considerations, should continue to determine which planning applications would be approved. However, we know that many local development plans are not up to date. Even if they were, there seems to be uncertainty as to whether the NPPF in its current form would itself cause all of them to be out of date.

The Minister, in our debate last week, contended not. I am bound to say that I believe that this is not a universal view. Is it accepted that the NPPF will introduce new policy which must be complied with? It is of deep concern that the noble Baroness gave the Government’s position in our debate in the following terms:

“We have not decided yet what, if any, transitional arrangements there should be”—

although the Minister then added—

“but we see that you cannot get rid of the regional spatial strategies and not have something else”.—[Official Report, 27/10/11; col. GC 384.]

Perhaps the noble Baroness can expand on the latter phrase to see whether we can derive any comfort.

As we made clear in last week’s debate, we do not support or encourage local planning authorities to hold back on updating their local plans, but is it not the case that they are dealing with a moving target? There has been a very considerable response to the NPPF consultations, to which the Government have to give due consideration. It may not be until next April when we see the final version of the framework, with the prospect of no further consultation thereon, and probably no parliamentary process. It is acknowledged that the Government would be looking to fast-track a process for updating local plans, and for obtaining certificates of conformity, but this is not, surely, a total solution. Local planning authorities will not know what they have to conform with until they see the final version of the NPPF sometime next year. What assessment have the Government made of the planning inspectorate’s capacity to cope with all of this? Indeed, what assessment have they made of local planning authorities’ capacity to cope with this?

Is it not the case that the presumption in favour of sustainable development is supposed to be the stick that encourages local planning authorities to get local plans up to date, because if they do not, the national policy will be the framework for planning decisions. This carries the implication that if the stick is effective, local authorities will want to avoid the NPPF on its own providing the framework without the local plan—that is, development which an up-to-date local plan would not support could gain approval unless the adverse impacts of development would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits. Does the Minister accept that this could be the consequence of not having local plans up to date?

The Government are asking local planning authorities to ensure that their local plans are up to date when the NPPF, as drafted, includes new policy and the final form is unknown. Will an up-to-date plan not have to reflect the duty to co-operate? The draft NPPF is clear that local planning authorities will be expected to co-operate and to plan for issues with cross-boundary impacts. A demonstration of this will be required when local plans are submitted for examination. Will it be the case, therefore, that any plan which does not involve the duty to co-operate could be challenged as being not up to date?

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[Lord Best]

My Lords, in Committee and on Report, I tabled amendments on transitional arrangements. I agree that it is imperative that local plans are in place as soon as possible but councils must have adequate time and resources to put in place sensible plans that conform to the new NPPF and ensure that local needs are met and local people have a say in the development that affects them. This will require clear transitional arrangements so that citizens, councils and developers have certainty about when and how the presumption of sustainable development will apply. Those areas that have invested a significant amount of time and resources in getting an up-to-date local plan in place prior to the changes should not be required to go through the process again or to face further delays. It is important that any process for registering conformity is light touch and swift.

I have been pleased to hear from the Royal Town Planning Institute that progress is being made in making transitional arrangements. I know that the Local Government Association is also part of the process of working with the Government on this. I feel sure that the Minister will be able to confirm that appropriate arrangements will be put in place quickly and I look forward to hearing her response to the sensible points raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I congratulate the Labour Party on writing such a brilliant amendment. The interesting thing about transitional arrangements is that when the Bill came to your Lordships’ House, they were not being talked about at all. The view was that in six months it could all be sorted out. The more it has been discussed in this House and with Ministers, the more it has become clear to everyone, including those of us who raised it tentatively at first, that it is an extremely important issue. Getting it right is crucial to the transition from the present system to the new system. The good news is that I believe that the Government, particularly the planning Ministers, now understand that. The bad news is that they have not yet produced a clear plan for that transition and how it will work. I believe that it is being thought about seriously across government.

Whether or not it should be in the NPPF is an interesting question. Originally, we were told that it did not need to be in the Bill because it could be in the policy framework. The more some of us think about it, the more complex it is and the policy framework may not be the best place for it—certainly not for most of it. It is so complex and requires so much detailed and substantive guidance to planning authorities on how to cope with the transition that it probably will need separate guidance. I do not think that this would in any way undermine the Government’s wish to bring the total of planning policy guidance down to around 50 pages, although I think that it will be a bit more than that when it comes out. The point is that, by its very nature, guidance on the transitional process will be temporary; it will come and then it will go. That is another reason why perhaps it should not be in the NPPF but should be separate guidance to local planning authorities in some detail as to how to cope.

Going back to another anecdote, I am reminded of the following phrase, which I learnt from Professor Danny Dorling:

“Anecdote is the singular of data”.

In this case I think it genuinely is.

I am about to read from a Pendle Council press release, not for special pleading but because I believe it is typical of the position that very many local planning authorities are in at the moment. I received the press release on Tuesday, headed “Six week consultation on Pendle’s most important planning document”. It says:

“It’s the final chance for Pendle residents to comment on a document that will influence how Pendle changes in the years to come. A six-week consultation starts on Friday 28th October on the Core Strategy”.

Then it explains what is in the document and what its purpose is. It continues:

“Between now and Monday 12th December you can view a draft version of the Core Strategy”,

at various council outlets and libraries throughout Pendle or, alternatively, on the website. It goes on to say:

“During the six-week consultation, planning officers will be attending a series of drop-in sessions in different parts of Pendle”.

That is what that glossy leaflet was all about. I think there are 10 or 12 of those taking place. It is a big consultation operation and exercise. It then says:

“A display will also be available to view at Nelson's Number One Market Street”—

which is the council’s call-in centre—

“for the full six weeks”.

The councillor who looks after planning issues in Pendle says:

“‘The Core Strategy will set out the overall approach for planning and development in Pendle for the next 15 years, so it's essential that residents make their views known before it's finalised … This is your final chance to help shape the future of Pendle’”.

Then I thought: this is all going ahead. The council quite rightly, I think, decided to continue going ahead with the production of its local plan as quickly as possible despite the presence of the Localism Bill casting a shadow over all these operations. This is really localising and turning into an anecdote some of the broad questions that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked. Will Pendle Council and lots of other councils around the country have to start again when this Bill comes into effect? To what extent will they have to go back and revisit their evidence base for their local plan? To what extent will they have to go back to the core strategy—which is 200 to 250 pages thick, I would guess—and rewrite it? To what extent will the whole process now be put back by six or 12 months? Will this quite intensive consultation process all have to be done again at this time next year perhaps? Those are the kinds of practical questions that councils all over the country are facing. They need very clear guidance on the transitional period from the Government as quickly as possible.

I think that this is my last speech on this Bill. There may be sighs of relief around the House. I have already thanked the Minister, her colleagues and the civil servants on the Bill team for their great kindness and for the assistance that I and my colleagues have had. I also want to thank people around the House. I thank the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Beecham, on the Labour Front Bench for their very sensible and constructive approach to the Bill. I may be doing severe damage to their career prospects within the Labour Party by saying that, but I think it needs to be said. We have worked with them and discussed things with them. We have not always agreed, but the amount of co-operation that there has been around the House on the Bill has been to the advantage of the House and to the advantage of the Government in that when the Bill leaves very shortly now, it will be a very much better Bill than when it came.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, it is a great strength of the Government’s policy that it commits us to plan-led and sustainable development. It follows from that that it would be extremely unfortunate if there were to be possibly a long interval—a black hole—in which possibly half of planning authorities, maybe even all, did not have a valid plan. During that period there would be real danger of abuse and bad, inappropriate development gaining permission, and perhaps even being built, which would contradict the Government’s proper objectives. Unless the Minister is able this evening to give clear-cut reassurance that there will be firm and legally binding transitional arrangements, I fear there could be consequences that the Government do not want. I also fear that there will be needless public anxiety—or, possibly, even justified public anxiety—and it would be sensible and helpful if the Minister could finally allay our anxieties on this point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I think there is an important point here. Will the certificate of conformity be available to planning authorities that have an approved local plan that is waiting for inspection before it is inspected, or will it be only for local plans that have already been adopted?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thought the noble Lord had had his last word on this Bill, so I am a little bit taken aback. I will get an answer to that question as we go along. The answer is no—only adopted plans will have the certificate of conformity.

I hope that I have made it clear that the transitional arrangements are still under consideration but that there will be transitional arrangements. I have been asked whether there will be guidance from the Secretary of State. It will set out as clearly as possible what the transitional arrangements are and any other procedural issues.

Let me conclude by reiterating—this is not my last word, unfortunately—the importance that this Government place on local plans and the need for effective arrangements, delivered through policy or guidance, to manage transition. I want to offer a firm reassurance that the Government recognise the importance of this, as I said earlier today, and will ensure that this is addressed alongside the revisions that are made to the NPPF itself. We are of course looking very closely at all the suggestions that have been made about transition during the consultation process.

We recognise there are genuine issues to be addressed about the status of local plans during the transitional period. I hope that I have addressed some of these tonight, but we will also be considering them further. With these reassurances I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.