Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
8:55 am
Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)
I echo the Minister's kind remarks, Mr. Amess. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and that of your co-Chairman, Mr. Pike. We will do our best to make sure that our proceedings are expedited in good order, although we shall oppose the Bill through every avenue that is open to us. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Bill with the Minister of State, her colleague, the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), and other members of the Committee. I hope that we will have a constructive debate, but it will be more constructive if the Government listen to our arguments and accept our amendments.
The genesis of the Bill lies in three excellent Green Papers issued by the Government. The major one, ''Planning: delivering a fundamental change'', sets the context from which the Bill derives. Paragraph 1.2 of the document states:
''England is one of the most crowded countries in the world. Only 8% of the land surface is urbanised, but over 90% of our population lives in urban areas. We need good planning to deliver development that is sustainable and which creates better places in which people can live and work.''
I do not believe that anyone who has anything to do with the planning system would object to that
statement—indeed, they would praise it. The purpose of the Bill is to improve the planning system. Conservatives do not believe that there is much wrong with it that could not be put right. The two aspects that are fundamentally wrong are that it is too slow and that planning authorities do not have enough staff with sufficient expertise.
It would be entirely possible and better to reform the present system than to conduct the root-and-branch reform proposed in the Bill. No Government can introduce an entirely new system and get it right first time. The Bill proposes fundamental change, and I guarantee that members of the Committee will one day be back in another Committee Room on another Corridor discussing another planning Bill to amend this one. It would be better to try to amend the existing system, but the Government have introduced the Bill, and we must debate it.
As I said, the Bill proposes fundamental change. It introduces the regional spatial strategy, which will draw powers from local to regional authorities. It also reserves huge powers for the Secretary of State, which is fundamentally wrong. Surely it must be right to keep planning at the lowest possible level. If one draws planning decisions away from local people, they will not have ownership of the outcomes. They will not be happy with decisions if they feel that they have been imposed on them by the region or, even more so, by the Government. I hope that, even if the Bill becomes law, in practice, the day-to-day practice will be that local authorities, as far as is humanly possible, will make the decisions. We will discuss the regional spatial strategy and the regional planning body under part 1, but we believe that they will draw power away from local people.
The Bill is premature. The Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill has not had Royal Assent, yet we are proposing a whole raft of planning policy for regional bodies that are not yet in place or are not likely to be put in place in some of the eight regions. We will end up with a mishmash of regional bodies delivering planning policy. It may be, although we hope not, that some areas will have elected regional assemblies. In other areas, regional chambers, the Government Office or the regional development agency will be responsible for planning. The country will be broken up into a mishmash of planning and other bodies. That is undesirable and will create further opportunities for Europe completely to dominate this country on a regional basis.
My colleagues have greater planning expertise than I do. We will debate the Bill with great vigour and rigour and take every opportunity to try to improve it. We do not like the system of programme motions. It is wrong to be constrained to a certain number of sittings, because no one knows which parts of the Bill will be controversial or how long it will take to deal with them. Even more than that, the Government have redefined the programming procedure. Knives mean that we have to leave certain sections of the Bill after a certain number of sittings, whether we like it or not. That seems wrong. We should spend longer on especially controversial parts of the Bill. If a part of the Bill is uncontroversial, we should quickly move on
to more controversial parts. I register a protest about the sittings motion. We do not like the procedure; it is undemocratic. If we are sitting on a Committee, we are adult enough to make our own decisions as to how long we should take, and on what matters we want to debate.
Finally, I make one housekeeping point. It seems that under our new hours, we shall all have to get up earlier in the morning. I do not mind that—I am perfectly happy to be here at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. However, if we are to be here at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning, let us ensure that the other housekeeping functions of the House are kept up. This morning, there were no notices along the Corridor showing which Committee Room we would be sitting in. Yesterday's notices were there, but not today's. I do not criticise any officials, but we must think about such matters. When I left Portcullis House, the Vote Office was not open. I would be grateful if you would pass the matter on to Mr. Speaker, Mr. Amess. I will raise the matter myself if necessary. People will have to get up earlier in the morning so that the housekeeping functions keep up with the earlier hours of Committees.
We shall oppose some of the Bill with great rigour. We do not like the timetable motion. Having said that, we shall operate in the Committee as congenially as we can and shall try to produce a better Bill at the end of the 12 sittings.