Clause 30
Greater London Authority Bill
10:30 am
Michael Gove (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that if there were an Uma Thurman role in the Bill, it would fall to the Minister for Housing and Planning.
The importance of keeping local powers local is that they allow the people who live in a community a vital say in shaping how that community develops. They ensure that the affection that local people have for the area in which they have grown up or in which they work and live is reflected in the strategic view that locally elected representatives take of the development of their area. Under clause 30, the Mayor will acquire a power, which currently only the Secretary of State has, to direct changes to that plan. That means that the Mayor could rewrite the plan in accordance with either his strategic or his ideological objectives. We are concerned that that is a further dilution of the powers that local people have.
It is understandable why the Secretary of State should have the power to direct changes, but one point that we need to make about the Secretary of State directing changes is that that process slows down planning significantly. We have already had a number of examples of districts and local authorities outside London coming forward expeditiously with an LDF, submitting it to the Secretary of State and then having it thrown back in their face, forcing them to go back to the drawing board. During this period in the process of planning, the certainty that developers expect and that residents have every right to expect is denied them. The process of plan making has become slower and more cumbersome following the changes to planning legislation made by the Government. They claim to want to make the planning system more streamline, effective, market conscious and sensitive to community involvement, but they have succeeded in slowing the process, which has disappointed developers and irritated residents.
Clause 30 introduces another layer of complexity to the scheme. Currently, the Secretary of State can direct changes: clause 30 means that the Mayor could also direct changes. The senior planning officer in a local authority may attempt to develop a local development scheme with elected members of the authority, by consulting local amenity groups, and by doing everything possible to talk to those commercial interests that keep the borough lively and successful. What happens to that process when that officer has heavy-handed intervention not only from the clunking fist of central Government, but from the south paw from city hall? That double whammy will leave local planners punch drunk. For that reason, we believe that the power direction should be struck out. It serves neither the interests of efficiency or the priority of community involvement.
On the importance of community involvement in planning, some inevitably say that Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and localists are all too keen on local boroughs deciding things because they are closet nimbys—people who hide behind the language of localism because of their resistance to development. Allow me to take that argument head on. As the Minister for Housing and Planning has graciously acknowledged to the Committee, and in the House last night, those of us charged by the leader of the Conservative party with coming up with housing and planning policy have made it clear that we believe in increasing the supply of housing. That is the coherent view of the Department for Communities and Local Government shadow team. It is also the view of the leader of the Conservative party, as he outlined in his speech to the Conservative party conference.