Localism Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 148ZE, I will also speak to Amendments 148ABA, 150C and 152C in the same group. These amendments are basically about equality. New Section 61E(8), which was inserted into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, says that the local planning authority can refuse to make a neighbourhood development order in the event of non-compliance with ““any EU obligation”” or with the Human Rights Act 1998. Amendment 148ZE would add compliance with the Equality Act 2010 to these obligations. Amendment 150C makes the same stipulation about a local development plan. Amendment 148ABA states that a neighbourhood forum exercises, "““a function of a public nature when exercising functions under””," the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. Amendment 152C would require an equalities impact assessment on neighbourhood development orders. At the heart of these amendments, which are based on suggestions from Friends of the Earth, which has worked on this issue with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and local planning networks and communities, are the existing unequal levels of participation in local decision-making. Local power dynamics come to play in planning as in other spheres, as any of us who are involved in local politics know. This is partly to do with resources, poverty and expectations, and the ability of people to communicate with official bodies, but it can also be to do with inequality and discrimination. Experiences vary between different places, and they are not all bad, but there was some general commentary on the problem in How Fair is Britain?, the Equality and Human Rights Commission's first triennial review, which was published last year. This found that groups that share protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 are currently underrepresented in local decision-making. It also identified the decline in opportunities for individuals to contribute to decisions that affect their lives as a major barrier to moving towards a fairer society. DCLG's most recent citizenship survey found that when given greater flexibility many public bodies tend to overlook vulnerable and underrepresented groups and that certain groups, such as younger and older people, although not, I think, older people in your Lordships' House, feel consistently excluded from the decision-making process—hence the need to put this in the legislation and to underpin the whole process with equality legislation. I have tabled elsewhere amendments aimed at entrenching the inclusiveness of neighbourhood forums and the right to be heard, which will also help to tackle this issue and which we will reach in due course. This is an important issue, and a major issue of principle, and I beg to move.