Clause 1 - Regional Spatial Strategy
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
9:15 am
Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)
Before getting to the meat of the amendment, I should make a declaration of interest. As stated in the Register of Members' Interests, I am a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and I have property interests. Sadly, I do not think that they will be enhanced by the Bill, but one never knows whether they might be in future.
I pay tribute to the Council for the Protection of Rural England which suggested the amendment. It is a key amendment because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet said, the Bill places great importance on the new concept of the regional spatial strategy. The concept of a spatial strategy is not new—it means all the development that is going on around us—but it is certainly new on a regional basis. We will examine later the procedures for drawing up those spatial strategies, which bodies will do so and which body is to be nominated, but under clause 1 we consider what they will contain.
Surprisingly enough, considering the importance of the matter and the huge detail that the Bill goes into, the detail of what is to be in the regional spatial strategies is pretty thin. It is a missed opportunity. Clearly in this increasingly litigious age, it is likely that they will at some stage end up in our domestic courts or the European courts. The judges will have to make a judgment about what is supposed to be in them. The courts are reluctant to over-rule any decision that is set out clearly in a Bill of a domestic Parliament. That is particularly true of the European court. Therefore it is desirable—