Nic Dakin
Main Page: Nic Dakin (Labour - Scunthorpe)
Simon Hughes
I will be literally a minute, because many colleagues wish to speak. This is not quite the way I would have chosen to spend my birthday evening, but there we go.
I want to ensure that the Minister has not ignored my amendments 371, 372 and 370. The first two would require planning authorities to be more effective in their consultation on a planning application, and I suggest that within a quarter of a mile radius of the application site is a much more precise definition than just “the vicinity”.
I welcome the abolition of the Infrastructure Planning Commission, and the fact that the arrangements will be taken back into a democratically accountable planning system. In the case of a big scheme such as the one that we may have coming down the track in Southwark for the great Thames sewerage main, I hope that we can still allow local authorities the ability to make the planning decision where there is a large structure in a borough on a particular site that is a unique part of the development. Of course there must be a bigger authority taking a strategic national decision, but where there is a local site of significance, the local authority should have a supplementary power to make that decision too. I hope that at some stage I will get positive noises from the Minister and that we might get appropriate changes at the other end of the building.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I rise to speak to my amendments 11 and 12, which are to do with the right to be heard and equalities. It is very important that individuals and groups have the right to be heard in neighbourhood planning. I am grateful for the Minister’s comments. I think he was saying that there would be a presumption in favour of this, but I would be keen to see what criteria people will be using to guard against that happening for a mischievous purpose, or whatever. If the Minister is saying that there is a presumption in favour of oral representation where people want to take that option, that is very important.
On equalities, it is important, under the Equalities Act 2010, to demonstrate that certain people are under-represented in the decision-making process. In 2010, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published its first triennial review “How fair is Britain?”, which identified the decline in opportunities for individuals to contribute to decisions that affect their lives as a major risk factor in moving towards a fairer society. I think the Minister said that there is no need for concern about this but that he will consider it further and ensure that equalities legislation is operable in these terms. If that is the case, I welcome it.
Greg Mulholland
I will try to keep my comments brief; realistically, with four minutes to go, I probably cannot keep them any briefer. I know the age of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), but I will not reveal it at this stage and just wish him a happy birthday.
I support a levelling of the planning process either by a third-party right of appeal or by the abolition of a developer’s right of appeal. Had the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend been one that would work, I would certainly have supported it. I have just been involved in a planning process in Adel in Leeds, where we had an absolutely farcical situation in which David Wilson Homes, the developer, withdrew its scheme halfway through an appeal, but the system still allowed it to reapply for outline planning permission, which it then got. That was an absolute farce—an entirely shoddy, underhand and anti-localist way of doing things. I want to bring that to Ministers’ attention.
On pubs, there has been a lot of talk about the Duck and Drake—the many Duck and Drakes in the country. There is no finer place to hold a neighbourhood forum than in a pub. However, in terms of what this Bill does to strengthen communities’ hands in protecting pubs, the most appropriate pub name would probably be the Hot Air Balloon. As I have said to Ministers before, I am afraid that there is very little in the Bill, as it stands, to give communities a greater say. At the moment, although there have been changes, it remains perfectly legal to demolish a free-standing pub without planning permission. The Bill does nothing to change the fact that a pub can become a restaurant, a café, a betting shop or a payday loans shop without communities having any say whatsoever. If the Bill is to do anything to strengthen the hands of local communities, there are simple ways of doing that that do not prevent pubs from being developed when they are genuinely unviable.
On behalf of the all-party save the pub group, I have put this question to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who is the community pubs Minister, but I have not had an answer: do the Government, who claim to be a pro-pub Government, think it is right that profitable pubs that are wanted by their communities are being closed every single day? If the Government do not believe that that is right—I do not believe that any hon. Member in this House believes that it is—they must do something about it. I regret to say that at this stage, there is nothing in the Localism Bill that does that. I know that we will carry on this discussion, and I look forward to doing that and taking up the Minister’s offer of a meeting. However, at the moment, it is simply not good enough. If he, the ministerial team and the Government believe in pubs and in genuine localism, they must do more in this Bill. Otherwise, it will be a real opportunity wasted.