Clause 16 - Local development documents
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
2:30 pm
Mr David Wilshire (Spelthorne, Conservative)
I am grateful for that, Mr. Pike.
I had just finished speaking to amendment No. 196 before lunch, and I had accepted that the way in which it was worded might not appeal to the Minister. However, what it seeks to achieve is important. Amendment No. 196 would leave out subsection (2), which states:
''The local planning authority may also specify in the scheme such other documents as they think are appropriate.''
Amendment No. 196 seeks to make the point that for the local authority to say, ''This is what we want,'' is an enormously wide power, and I do not see why it should be. The documents are either necessary or they are not. The Minister might not want to delete subsection (2), and could argue that there is a need for it. The sensible alternative—we could consider it on Report—is for the local planning authority also to specify in the scheme such other documents as they have good reason to think are appropriate. There should be a test of reasonableness.
As the Minister was saying this morning, although we like to think that all local authorities are brilliant, or if they are not exactly brilliant now, they are getting better, there will be some, as he sadly conceded, that will drag their feet. In an imperfect world there will, I fear, be planning authorities that occasionally seek to act unreasonably. Either there should not be a provision that gives them a completely free hand, or, if the Minister thinks that it is a good idea to give them some discretion, that should be constrained by a test of reasonableness. Amendment No. 196 seeks to achieve that.
Amendment No. 88 raises some different issues and relates to subsection (1), which states:
''Documents which must be specified in the local development scheme as local development documents are''—
and there here follows a list of what such things are. Surprisingly, all that it can bring itself to say is:
''documents of such descriptions as are prescribed''.
I assume that these are documents to be prescribed by the Secretary of State, and, at the risk of repeating myself, I have to say that this is rule by diktat. The sole arbiter of all this procedure will be the Secretary of State who will prescribe it. I hope that we can discuss what sort of documents the Minister has in mind. It could be anything; there is no test of reasonableness. Curiously—although perhaps not so curiously for this Government—the Government think it necessary to go one step beyond, to say that the Secretary of State can do what he likes.
Clause 16(1)(b) speaks of
''the local planning authority's statement of community involvement.''
That is really a genuflection to political correctness, as I see it. It is most curious that this is the only statement mentioned, because the number of documents that could be listed is legion, yet the only one worthy of mention in the eyes of the Government is a statement of community involvement. Before I am accused of all sorts of things that I do not intend, let me make it absolutely clear that I am all in favour of a statement of community involvement—but why is it the only one listed?
Amendment No. 89 would amplify the list a little. It would have been possible to table all sorts of amendments adding all sorts of documents, but for this debate we are right to list at least those two. Earlier this morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) said that it was important to remember, in the context of the listing of
strategic planning statements, that there might be a region that did not have an elected assembly. As things stand, the strategic planning statements, documents and policies are more than likely to be decided on by people who have no democratic credentials. Indeed, some of those involved seem to have no grasp of the issues either.
My hon. Friend pointed out that in the absence of an elected regional assembly, this would be a sensible way of requiring a local planning authority to take on the role of making strategic planning statements. I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I anticipate that the Minister might be tempted to say, as he has in the past, that a local planning authority covers far too small an area for any regional or strategic thinking. However, an argument against dismissing the amendment is that he might consider the idea of charging joint committees of local planning authorities with the job. The joint committee could cover the entire area of the Government's artificial region—and they are artificial because the south-east, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley suggested, extends from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Man—or rather, the Isle of Wight. What on earth bits of Surrey, and bits of my constituency, have in common with the Isle of Wight when it comes to strategic planning, I do not know. The areas are so artificial.
If, however, we are to be forced down the route of strategic planning statements for areas, it is important that they be determined either by local planning authorities or by joint committees of local planning authorities. I know that the argument regularly trotted out against joint committees is that although the people on them may be elected, the joint committees themselves are not. At least, however, the members of a joint committee that has been formed to produce a planning statement will have been elected. Therefore the amendment standing in our name is worthy of consideration.
In reforming the planning process, we urgently need to emphasise transport plans. At the moment we tend to have wish lists that say, ''It would be a good idea if we did this.'' What they all too often lack is an indication of when that will happen and when it will be funded. Plans may make general statements to the effect that it would be nice to build a bypass here and a bypass there, and that we would need this, that and the other. However, without a coherent planning statement that makes it crystal clear which transport improvements will happen when, it is difficult to know when it will be best to release land for development, because no one will know when the roads and the railways will be available. It is therefore entirely proper that we should include a transport plan in the Bill.
For the same reasons, it would be wrong, for the purposes of this debate, to leave the determination of local transport plans to unelected people in some distant place—be it Milton Keynes, the Isle of Wight, Southampton, Brighton or wherever else the Government think it sensible to run an artificial region from.
The Government may not like the detailed wording of the amendments, and I can only repeat that the Opposition do not have the services of parliamentary draftsmen. However, our intention is to make it clear that we should not simply leave it to the Secretary of State to prescribe whatever documents he likes without at least setting out what they might be. If the Minister is not prepared to accept our suggestions, I hope that he will at least tell us what documents the Secretary of State might prescribe.