Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 2: 2: Schedule 1, page 152, line 5, at end insert— ““( ) The HCA shall exercise any powers granted by order made under section 13 and described in section 14, only through the delegation of such powers to a committee; and such committee shall hold all its meetings within the area of the local planning authority in which the land described in the order made under section 13 is situated.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this is a smaller but significant group of amendments dealing with the powers which the Government propose should be exercisable by the new Homes and Communities Agency in the area of planning, both in the making of plans and in dealing with planning applications. The group contains amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and a number of amendments from the Minister, on which I shall comment after I have spoken to my amendments. Amendment No. 2 seeks to provide that the HCA can exercise its powers only through a committee which holds its meetings in the area of the local planning authority in contention. If the HCA is to exercise planning powers, it will rapidly learn the importance of being seen not to be remote. Part of that includes physical and geographical accessibility so that people can get to meetings, hear the arguments and put their own case. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of hearing the arguments. Often people who have argued on one side of a case, even if they are not reconciled having heard the argument, at least have an understanding of why the other argument prevailed. My experience—now out of date—was that this was important for more than just the outcome of planning applications; it was the connection between local people and the local authority, about which many people were concerned. Amendment No. 74 is a probing amendment and seeks to apply the local government access to meetings and information provisions to the planning activities of the HCA. If it is not correct that these provisions will apply, some of us will think that that shows particularly bad faith. I hope I am going to be told that I need not worry about it and that it is all there somewhere—but I could not find it. The first of the amendments was suggested to me by the Town and Country Planning Association. Amendment No. 9 is rather different and concerns making assistance available to local planning authorities. In Committee, much was made of the need to provide planning expertise in different situations and the quite correct point that local planning authorities are very short of planners. The amendment would make the HCA a centre of excellence which would be available to local planning authorities. I may have mentioned at the previous stage that something like this was developing in London when I was a Member of the London Assembly—no doubt it is still going on—with the planners engaged by the GLA assisting the London boroughs, where there was less expertise in dealing with large-scale, complex applications. Amendments Nos.17, 18 and 19 go to the heart of the Government’s proposals. In a Bill which, by and large, we on these Benches support, Clauses 13 and 14 are, frankly, offensive. They give the new agency powers that, admittedly, have been there in the background and used once by English Partnerships, the agency chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, but are now centre stage in the Government’s proposals for the HCA. Planning is central to local government, and I stress both ““local”” and ““government””. The HCA, however desirable its objectives, is not a democratically elected Government. The Minister has done her very best to assure us about how rarely the powers will be used, but the more she does so, the more the argument boils down in my mind to whether they are really needed at all. The Government keep saying that the powers would be used only in special circumstances. If that is so, I cannot see a justification for a blanket order. My Amendments Nos. 17, 18 and 19 would limit the Secretary of State’s order-making powers to particular purposes and particular kinds of development. That does not mean only a single purpose or kind of development; I have not narrowed it down as much as that. If the situation that the Government anticipate might have to be dealt with is so special, it must be possible to analyse it—after all, one needs to analyse a problem before offering a solution—as well as to define and articulate it, and to put it in an order designed for the purpose. Amendments Nos. 193 and 196 would apply the affirmative procedure to these orders, not the negative one. Given the significance of what was proposed at the start of our proceedings, I thought that this must have been an oversight, but it appears not. The Government should justify each order, hence those amendments. Amendment No. 25, a requirement for a public local inquiry, was put down at much the same time as the Government’s amendments were tabled. While I see the merit in building on old legislation that is still around, which could be useful, the Government’s amendments cover rather similar ground so I will not speak any longer to that amendment. Amendment No. 26 would take out the new agency’s plan-making powers and leave it with development control powers—that is, powers to deal with planning applications. I find it hard to see why the HCA needs to be able to make plans. We have been told that there may be inconsistencies between plans for adjoining areas where a proposed development straddles a boundary, but the local development frameworks of both the planning authorities concerned, if that is the case, must comply with the regional spatial strategy. Could there be major inconsistencies? It seems unlikely. More to the point, how practicable is this? The local development document process is a long and complex one. Do the Government really envisage the new agency going through what we know local planning authorities have been struggling with since the 2000 Act imposed those provisions on them—provisions that may be rowed back when we see the Planning Bill? Amendments Nos. 28, 29 and 30 are amendments to Clause 14, which replicate my amendments to Clause 13, and Amendment No. 31 is consequential. Amendment No. 32 is a continuation of the argument; it would leave out paragraph (c) of Clause 14(6), which allows the Government to disapply any enactment in the case of the HCA. It is one thing, if the HCA has these new powers, for the Secretary of State to be able to modify enactments, as he can, or perhaps use synonyms to adjust or tweak them to fit the fact that the HCA, not a local planning authority, will be taking decisions, but in effect to rewrite planning legislation is quite another. Whatever assurances we are given about how this will just make sure that all the powers are in place, that is what Clause 14(6)(c) says. With regard to Amendment No. 33, so does Clause 14(8); that amendment is also consequential. On the Government’s amendments, I again thank the Minister for responding so positively to the amendments of my noble friend Lord Greaves on private streets. Not many of us achieve excising parts of a Bill, certainly not at this stage. I acknowledge what the Government are proposing by way of local involvement; it is very important and I can see that time has been spent designing the provisions. But as the Minister knows, I do not accept the basic proposition that the HCA should have such extensive planning powers. I have two questions for the Minister on her amendments. Is the statement of local involvement made on the basis that the Planning Bill acknowledges that the 2004 Act has not worked very well and those provisions are being rewritten? Or is it an addition to the statement of community involvement in the 2004 Act, which is still on the statute book? Secondly—and this is a comment rather than a question; this will not come as a surprise to the Minister as we have discussed it privately—the local authority may nominate a member of the committee, and that person may be a member or an officer of the local authority. Members of a planning committee are not there in a representative capacity. Any officer who is pitched into this situation by his local planning authority could not represent it and that, for him, might be a career-defining moment. I beg to move.