Planning Bill

First, I draw Members' attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests, so that they are clear that I have an interest in a family business. Planning causes more anger and concern among my constituents than virtually any other issue. In my constituency surgery, I probably see more people about planning than any other issue. Any Government who seek to change and reform the system are very brave because planning is an issue that angers and moves people. It is rising up the political scale—a situation that is likely to get worse. We are a nation of owner-occupiers and people relate almost everything that goes on in their neighbourhood to the value of their home. Even when something might put up the value of their home, they always presume that it is going to reduce it. That tends to make people very anxious about what goes on. As a nation, one of our problems is that occasionally we have been too parsimonious in the compensation that we have paid people who live in the vicinity of very large infrastructure projects. Sometimes people feel that they are going to lose out, whereas if there were a far more generous scheme, we could speed up the planning process and allow people to be bought out. I have always thought that we ought to be a little more French when it comes to our large infrastructure projects. Clearly, there has been something wrong, over years, when it has taken a long time to produce something that is of overwhelming national interest. In the case of terminal 5, Schiphol and de Gaulle airports have added various runways in the time that it has taken us to get one more terminal at Heathrow. Our European competitors sometimes benefit from a much more streamlined system. Nevertheless, I am concerned about what the Government are suggesting in terms of the national policy statements. Clearly, one can set what might have to be a national target for the number of people who want to use airports or for the amount of energy that should be produced, but I am not sure whether one should discriminate between one form of energy or another in a national policy statement. Many of these things are market driven, and markets move. If politicians set a particular objective in a planning statement, in a short space of time the economics of their proposal may well change. I wonder how specific the policy statements are going to be. Will they specify X nuclear power stations, or will they specify what might be needed, on the one hand or the other, to meet a balanced energy policy? Rather like other Members who have contributed to the debate, I am a little concerned that the national policy statements will be too specific on a particular objective and that, as a result, they may do a lot of the work of the infrastructure planning commission by pre-determining what may be in the national interest without paying regard to the various options and alternatives and to what is happening in terms of the world economy. I am concerned about how those things will interact. I also have a concern—this point was raised ably by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts)—about the infrastructure planning commission. The Secretary of State may well be able to determine smaller applications, but that body may well determine some substantial decisions, such as those on nuclear power stations. In the same way as the perception is that the Foreign Office represents foreigners, we may well get a situation in which the infrastructure planning commission will represent the large infrastructure planning projects and be seen by most of my constituents and many people in this country to lead in those areas. Like many other contributors to the debate, I have a concern with the experts, rather than people who are neutral, who will make a judgment on some of these things. We need to speed up the planning process, but I am not sure that this proposal will do that, or do it in a way that does not cause great concern. At the most extreme, we have seen examples of civil protest. We have only to consider the Newbury relief road, and the cost that was added to that project by security, to understand that although we may on occasion be trying to save money on planning in the Bill, there may be other costs because of the civil disobedience that might occur if people do not feel that the system is fair. I welcome what the Government are doing with the community infrastructure levy. The original proposals were flawed and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) set out that the Bill is not entirely clear about how the levy will develop. However, a low tariff that captures some value from all developments, including one-home or two-home developments, is a much better way of doing things in the long term. Clearly, a lot of questions need to be asked. The Secretary of State said that there might have to be a regional or a county levy. Any source of money that is raised via a form of taxation will always be prone to Treasury interference. In the case of the grant settlement for police authorities, there is a formula to share the money. In the case of council housing rent, there is a national fund. Money is taken from some housing authorities and given to others. I cannot believe that a situation in which there will be hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds, and some authorities will get considerably larger sums of money than others, will not become a key item in relation to which the Government will need to build in some kind of transfer of resources. The Treasury may well lose capital gains tax on some projects as a result of the measure and therefore will be tempted to interfere. The amount of money raised will be substantial, so we need to know a lot more. What will happen to the interest on such moneys? Will there be pressure to spend the moneys within a particular time? Will authorities be allowed to passport money to other authorities if they perceive that there is some benefit to them? Although my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) joked about his constituents not wanting to pay for Luton, there might be an interest in a Luton airport expansion that provided some money for the region. That might be legitimate, but such a scenario might also be legitimate in relation to the extension of a motorway or a spur road that may not be within a particular council area, but may have an impact on businesses or vehicles going to that area. In East Anglia, for example, there are some quite isolated communities. Improving roads 20 or 30 miles away might have a benefit. We need to know how money can be moved around, so we need much more detail. I hope that the Public Bill Committee will be given that when it considers this important proposal. I raised conservation areas earlier. If more freedoms are introduced for people involved in the planning control system, will the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda)—if he is winding up the debate—tell us how that will impact on conservation areas? Clearly, there will be concerns that if people are allowed to do various things in Georgian areas, even if they are environmentally friendly, that might have an impact. We need a clear statement on where we stand. We need a little more information about what can be done about development control, which is something that most of my constituents consider to be a serious issue. There are a lot of people in Poole who use the planning system to get what they want—plus a bit. They create valuable developments by breaking the spirit of the system, and sometimes by deliberately breaking the law. We can all be blasé about the millions of pounds that are made through planning applications, and there have been a lot of major developments, especially infill developments, in Poole. The system does not give local authorities' development control people enough clout to deal with those who wilfully try to ride roughshod over the system. The fines need to be substantially higher, and the process and timetable to deal with such transgressions need to be faster. As the Bill goes through the House, especially in Committee, I hope that Ministers will look carefully at the real value that people get. Many development control officers are at a great disadvantage when dealing with people who break rules and regulations and ride roughshod over the system. The Bill might be an opportunity to deal with that problem. We have heard the Bill described as a house with no furniture. Although I welcome some aspects of it, we will need a lot of detail before we will know whether its architecture will work well. The Government must be careful about national planning statements, and the infrastructure planning commission is probably a move in the wrong direction. Like many hon. Members who have spoken, I think that it would have been better to have gone down the route of the Planning Inspectorate. The community infrastructure levy—if it is a levy—represents a much better way of raising money, given its transparency and the fact that it should be simpler. More importantly, while complicated section 106 agreements employ lawyers for ever—some cases take two years—the measure should cut a lot of lawyers' bills and the effort that they have to put into the planning system. If the proposal speeds up the system and allows people to do their calculations, it will be welcomed by both industry and those in government. Opportunities have been missed, however, so I hope that the Minister will at least look at whether we can increase fines and the powers of local authorities so that they can deal with people who transgress. Problems are being caused by the great shortage of decent planning officers because the private sector has taken good planning officers from the public sector to become private consultants. Nevertheless, we need to strengthen our local authorities' ability to deal with those who transgress.