Clause 31
Greater London Authority Bill
5:00 pm
Michael Gove (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 52, in page 36, line 20, at end insert—
‘ “2D Application to be heard in public
Mayoral decisions on planning applications shall be made in public after public oral representations by interested parties.”.’.
The amendment relates heavily to the debate that we have just had, and to an extent some of the arguments were pre-empted by the Minister in her summing-up. I do not think that there is any shame in the Minister having done so, because the amendment is so intimately involved with that debate and discussion. The purpose of the amendment is simply to ensure that the exercise of the Mayor’s planning powers is put on a statutory footing when it comes to the question of public consultation. In the previous debate we rehearsed the way in which the Mayor—apart from the Secretary of State, who exercises a unique power—is a one-man or one-woman planning authority.
The case for public involvement in the process of the Mayor deliberating on planning applications has already been conceded in principle in the order that relates to the Mayor’s exercise of positive planning powers. The Minister has acknowledged that it would be perfectly possible for the Mayor, if he wished, to shape a public hearing after he had received an application from the individual or from the developer who was pushing a planning application or from the borough that was or had been responsible for deciding it. In certain circumstances, we already have a procedure to allow the Mayor to give his deliberations in public and to receive evidence in public. Unfortunately, the provision in the order allows the Mayor to decide the scope of the tribunal or hearing. It seems to us that our amendment would put on a statutory footing the requirement that we would set out not for the Mayor, but for all time through this House for the way that such a public hearing should take place.
If the Government believe that it is important on such a matter—they clearly do, given the detail into which they have gone in the order—to lay down centrally what a strategic planning application might be, for example, how much more important is it for Government to lay down how the Mayor should exercise those powers in public rather than leaving it for this Mayor or a future Mayor to decide on a matter of whim how he might seek to do so? When the Minister was discussing the exercise of those powers in public, she made it seem almost as though we were being invited to vote for some sort of return to ancient Greece, where the citizens of London would gaze on the Mayor—as though, like Socrates, he would sit there with one fist underneath his chin as he deliberated on the planning applications—waiting, waiting, waiting until he delivered himself of his view. The truth, however, is that what we would require and what the amendment seeks to promote is a means whereby the Mayor would have to justify in public the decision to which he came, to publish in public the papers that govern that decision, to take evidence in public from those who had a material interest and to ensure a greater degree of transparency.
I should say that that initiative, far from being the quixotic view of those on the Conservative Benches, is soundly based on the Greater London assembly’s report on planning, “Behind Closed Doors”, which I earlier commended to the Committee. If the Minister feels that for any reason the amendment is not drafted precisely as she would like, I will make her an offer. If she wishes to come up with an appropriate new clause either in the course of this Committee or on Report with a means of putting on a statutory footing how the Mayor should decide those applications, we are more than willing to meet her to discuss that. It seems that to leave the decision entirely to the Mayor in the order, which is pendant on our discussions, is to leave in the hands of a future incumbent of that office a power that we in this House should delineate today.