Clause 25 - Changes to, and revocation of, development consent orders

Part of Infrastructure Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:00 pm on 6 January 2015.

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Photo of Jeremy Browne Jeremy Browne Liberal Democrat, Taunton Deane 2:00, 6 January 2015

Yes, indeed, on this issue we did not play the game of shuffling responsibility as astutely as two parties with greater experience of government. We are entering into a conspiracy now. There is this airport  commission, and the only thing that it has really been told is not to come up with any views until after the general election. The time scale is entirely arbitrary. After the general election, when all the people who live near Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, or Manchester airport—or wherever it might be—have safely put their votes in the ballot box, there will be a puff of smoke and someone for whom no one has ever voted will come along and tell one group of people that their lives are going to be turned upside down.

Those people will go to the Member of Parliament they have just elected who will say, “It’s nothing to do with me; this is an independent commission. We don’t have the ability to meddle in this sort of business. We are not capable of thinking strategically, but if you would like help with some day-to-day stuff in your neighbourhood I am keen to try to help as your local MP.” I find that dispiriting. I think we should have bigger ambitions in politics than managing the ideas of unelected people.

It worries me that this is part of a wider phenomenon—the belief that elections and politics are not about big choices, which are what “experts” make, and that in any given situation there is a right answer and a wrong answer. If only people could get away from politicians who just squabble about things, and cut to the chase and find an expert—preferably somebody with some sort of academic credentials who looks suitably impartial—that person could give them “the right answer”.

I sometimes have that experience when talking to people who study politics at school, who say, “Well, you know, there is all this bickering. We just want to know the answer to the question. We don’t want all these politicians lying to us and telling us—you know. Which one is right and which one is wrong?” Sometimes I say, “Well, they might both be right or they might have different interpretations of what is right”. That is regarded as a completely unreasonable thing for a politician to suggest, but there are alternative visions. It is perfectly possible to argue that we should not have more airport capacity, in the name of environmentalism, or because a person is anti-globalisation, or hostile to trade. That is a perfectly respectable view. I disagree with that view, but if somebody agrees with it, they can put it forward at the general election.

There is an alternative view, which I hold, that in order to be a successful country in the 21st century we have to be able to interact effectively with people from around the world and our current airport capacity, particularly in the south-east, will increasingly limit our ability to do that. That is another point of view, but why do people not express it in Parliament? We do not need an expert to tell us. That is the whole point of the general election.

The reason I speak on this point is because we are acquiescing in the emasculation of our profession, if I can put it in such elevated terms. We assume that it will make the electorate like us more. What is dispiriting is that the more we go around telling everybody how inadequate we are and how little we can be trusted to make any big decisions, and how all we do is try to second-guess the decisions of experts who are not elected,  and the more that we pass ourselves off as entirely local caseworkers, admirable and important though that aspect of our job is, the more contempt the electorate seems to hold us in. It may be that we collectively should have the self confidence to believe in big ideas.