Clause 12
Local Democracy, Economic Developmentand Construction Bill [Lords]
5:45 pm

Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment 40, in clause 12, page 7, line 36, after ‘enactment’, insert

‘or relates to a planning or licensing application’.

David Amess (Southend West, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 41, in clause 12, page 7, line 36, after ‘enactment’, insert

‘or relates to a planning or licensing application, or to a matter on which the authority is at the time of the presentation of the petition, carrying out a formal consultation process in which the petition may be included’.

Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

Casting your eye over these amendments, Mr. Amess, it should strike you that they cover, at least in part, the same issue. Although they are related, amendment 41 goes slightly further. My hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne and I tabled these amendments to seek clarification from the Minister about the intention of the Bill, particularly in relation to petitions submitted concerning contentious planning or licensing issues.

Planning and licensing are covered by other legislation. I feel, and many of our constituents feel, that their views are not always taken thoroughly into consideration. The planning system needs reform further to recent Acts in order to reassure people that their views are being taken into account on issues that affect the development of their local area. The system needs some change to engage them with that process. As my hon. Friend said earlier, people are beginning to believe that what they say has no effect—planning is a prominent example of that. That is not to say that local authority members should not be free to make decisions based on the information available to them—information that might not be available to petitioners, who may bring forward other issues. Objectors feel that they do not have enough say when considering the possibility of a third-party right of appeal—an issue that I debated with the Minister’s colleagues during the passage of the Planning and Energy Act 2008. Such changes would reassure people that their views were being taken into account and that the planning system was more democratic than it currently is.

There are issues pertaining to planning and licensing that could necessitate a different approach. When we move on to discuss what local authorities should do when dealing with petitions, we ought to consider that certain issues, notably planning and licensing, are different from function and need to be handled differently.

Amendment 41 relates to how petitions on proposals that are already being considered by a principal local authority should be dealt with. Should they trigger the procedure that a principal local authority would have to follow under the Bill or could they simply be accepted and responded to as part of the existing consultation process? When such things are put on a statutory basis, I, like my hon. Friend, fear that they will become the main route for interaction with the local community. People on both sides of the process might try to slow  the planning or licensing process by triggering lots of petitions that would all have to be considered in the same way.

My contention is that we ought to be cautious in imposing standardised ways of dealing with petitions because particular factors pertain to planning and licensing. It is possible that existing consultation processes will be cut across. Sadly, as my hon. Friend pointed out, consultation has become a devalued concept. However, it does go on. I would hope that local authorities take more account of consultations than central Government and there is evidence that they do. In places where that is happening properly, it would be a shame to do something that cuts across the good work.

The amendments prod the Minister to defend the use of a standardised petition for considering petitions right across the functions of a council, even what some would call the quasi-judicial functions such as planning and licensing.

Stewart Jackson (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Peterborough, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman has made a good case and has explained the rationale behind the Liberal Democrat amendments. I would fight shy of anything that reduces the validity of petitions in the remit of quasi-judicial bodies. As a London borough councillor, I served on the licensing panel and the planning and regulatory committee in the good old days when we had a proper committee system and did not have first and second-class councillors, as we do now. I was always mindful of the importance of a petition in informing the debate, even when further judicial determinations were necessary.

A practical ramification of the Licensing Act 2003 and the secondary legislation attached to it is that the consultation procedures on matters such as varying the opening times of licensed premises and restaurants are very prescriptive. It is important that we have—to use a ghastly term because I cannot think of a better one—an holistic approach. To give a simple example, the McDonald’s in Peterborough city centre sought to open virtually 24 hours a day. As the constituency MP, I did not think that that should happen. I was told that as a result of case law and regulations, I was not permitted—even as the MP for Peterborough—to comment on that because I was not a local resident. However, had I organised a petition it might have been a different matter. If there were local residents on the petition, it would have been a valid objection to those proposals.

I am in sympathy with the idea that petitions need to be complementary to quasi-judicial processes, and the Minister should take that into account when responding.

Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Pensions Reform; Minister for Yorkshire and Humber), Department for Work and Pensions; Doncaster Central, Labour)

Amendments 40 and 41 relate to the Government’s public commitment to use the order-making power under clause 14 to exclude planning and licensing applications from the scope of the duty to respond to petitions. I want to make it clear that the list of issues excluded from the duty to respond to petitions should be very limited. We believe that building petitions into council decision-making processes will empower people, so we want to minimise the issues that are excluded and keep the scope of the duty as broad as possible. Obviously, there are some issues that it makes sense to exclude, such as licensing and planning applications, because we do not want to set up parallel routes for considering  local people’s concerns in such circumstances. There are already extensive processes for public involvement in planning and licensing applications.

I have a technical reservation about amendments 40 and 41, although they capture the broad aims of our intention. For instance, we want to ensure that, in addition to planning applications, planning enforcement decisions and the decision not to enforce would be excluded. To explain the sort of extra detail that we need to look at, it might be helpful to refer the Committee to Statutory Instrument No. 3261, the Overview and Scrutiny (Reference by Councillors) (Excluded Matters) (England) Order 2008. That order took the same approach for the councillor call for action, as we intend to take for petitions. However, it is quite long—30 lines—and adding such provisions to the Bill would not be the right approach.

Amendment 41 contains one additional exclusion. It provides that issues on which the authority is currently carrying out a formal public consultation should be excluded. That is an interesting idea. The rationale is the same for excluding planning and licensing applications. However, it would be important to reflect further on such matters and particular discussions with local government on how an exclusion might work in practice. The issues need to be thought through in detail, and using secondary legislation allows us to do that. We intend to consult on which issues should be excluded from the duty to respond to petitions after the Bill has received Royal Assent.

As I have said, we want to keep exclusions to a minimum, but it is also important that, in drawing up further legislation, we consult local authorities. I therefore cannot support amendments 40 and 41, and ask that they be withdrawn.

Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

I am pleased that the Minister is considering such issues in detail. I confess that I would not have expected her to have accepted them straight into the Bill. I wish to clarify that it is not my intention to imply that councils should not respond to petitions on planning or licensing issues. I am sure that the hon. Member for Peterborough was not implying that it was. It merely is that matters might be done differently from more standardised petitions on a matter of policy for a principal council.

Following the hon. Gentleman’s McDonald’s reference, a particularly contentious issue in part of my constituency is a lap-dancing club. I know that a number of hon. Members from all parties have contended with that issue in their constituencies. There is some dissatisfaction among local residents about how the petitions may have been submitted on that and whether current licensing powers mean that their local authority is able to respond to the wishes of the local community. The Government will now hopefully look at that through the recent Act put through by the Home Office.

Taking into account that the Minister said she would take on board the fact that there are differences between planning, licensing and more general matters of policy, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.