Legislative Reform (Epping Forest) Order 2011

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for introducing this further legislation and for his explanations. He has certainly tried very hard to give a good account of what has happened. I may have to return to one or two of the points because there are issues here on which we should perhaps dwell before we leave this order. It was also useful to have in front of the Committee the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, who helped to explain some of the context of the police decision, which is absent from any of the documentation that I have seen. It was also useful to have the background from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, who was entertaining as always in his recollections of his times. When will we see the book? Why do we not have it all down at one time? Every time the noble Lord speaks, he seems to have a little vignette of life either as an MP or as a member of the City corporation, which has informed the House, made us laugh and has lightened the tone on many occasions. Two things seem to be happening here—the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, is absolutely right that there are two halves to this. The first is the police’s decision—for all the right reasons, and probably correctly—regarding a place which they must have to secure the Games and the Paralympic Games. I do not think that we should confuse that in any sense with the processes then necessary to allow the legislation to permit us to establish the muster centre in the area that we are talking about. There is a decision properly arrived at by the police and in consultation with the appropriate authorities, which is that Wanstead Flats is the place where operational efficiency can best be achieved for the muster centre—and, for the limited period involved, that has to be the right decision. Conversely, I can imagine the impact that that decision had in the Home Office when it was realised that this was an area that is heavily constrained by legislation which has lasted for a very long time—indeed so long that they probably did not manage to read it correctly and, as has been explained, tried to consult on a provision that was introduced in 1878 but lapsed in 1882, so that the actual consultation itself was not in any sense to do with the legislation that we are dealing with. I suspect, although I have no evidence to support this, that the downward spiral started at that point and that, the panic having set in, they decided to do all they could to cover every possible area, as a result of which we ended up with the poor people living in the area having three separate consultations over two years to deal with issues that probably should not have been consulted on, in order to give a bolstering to the process. So we have a planning application which by all accounts seems to have gone well. I do not think that any issues arise from that. It would of course be necessary for there to be a planning process. I am glad that, until such time as the Localism Bill strikes us, these planning processes seem to work well and involve the local people. It received a proper level of response and went through. The reasons for the police consultation have been explained—although it was not really a consultation in that sense but a public information exercise. However, this consultation was rather difficult to engage with because it was only online; it was done in a relatively short time, and they had a set of preset questions that people had to respond to. It was not possible, as it often is not in electronic communications of this type, to write in your views or explain. I think that the local people could have been quite upset about that, and it is right to recognise that. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that when he replies. The consultation was described in another place as being potentially deficient mainly because of that. To describe, as they did in that process, the flats as, "““essential to ensuring the safety and security of the Games””," was, as has been said, a little bit of an overstatement. I suggest that the Government have rather overegged this. As for the Home Office consultation, as we have said, it set out on the wrong track, concentrating on Section 34, which lapsed, and not Section 36. I think that there were several factual errors as well as a rather limited approach to that. The impression, as far as I can tell from the responses that were received, was that the deal had been done and that the process that was being used was chosen simply as the best way of achieving that. That raises the one point that I would like to invite the Minister to respond on. It has been alleged in a number of places that in using the LRO procedure, the process was flawed from the start because the powers necessary to achieve the objective that the Home Office wished were already in the legislation, if it had looked in the right place; and, indeed, that this could have been done through by-laws introduced by the corporation as conservator. In that sense, a lot of this stuff would have come down a complete notch and would not have caused the subsequent difficulties. Consultations—a word, as I have hinted, which should be used carefully—are always difficult. However, to the extent that consultations were carried out in the process that we talked about, 31 responses were received. There were also responses to the hybrid petitions, which should be counted in that. Therefore, to that extent, views have been expressed. In the debate in another place, the local Member, John Cryer, suggested that there were issues that had not been properly discussed, including the impact of this whole arrangement on traffic, although that would certainly be part of the planning proposals, but mainly in relation to traffic for commuters and others who live locally and the impact of the Games. But I suspect that that has probably not been looked at. Security might be adversely affected in the area because the location of the police centre there will bring focus to that area which otherwise would not have happened. Although the compensation figure of £170,000 sounds very reasonable, nobody really seems to know where it came from, and although we are notionally talking about a three-month period during which the police will be in occupation of the site, there will clearly be periods before and afterwards when the site is prepared and restored during which it will not be appropriate for it to be used by local residents, so there are issues about that. We would be grateful if the Minister will reassure us in his response, as he has done already, that the Government recognise the mistakes that were made in this; indeed, he has apologised for them, which was good to hear. However, the main consideration is that the use of the LRO in the Act that has been selected for this does not set a precedent. Can he reassure us that we can be confident that in any future arrangements of this type—it may be that there will not be so many—we will not find that this process, which was definitely flawed and possibly defective, will not be prayed in aid in order to achieve an easy win in an area that should be subject to proper consultation and discussion that gives local residents a chance to make their points?