It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson). He and I spent many a happy afternoon on the Joint Committee on House of Lords reform, which was a hugely effective use of our time. The failure to use that time effectively is why we are here today, as the Government try desperately to fill the gaping hole in their legislative agenda.
I would like to begin at the beginning. The Government inherited a difficult economic scenario, then proceeded to make it infinitely worse by slashing capital spending, sucking demand out of the economy and sending us into a double-dip recession. Since then, they have been in catch-up mode, trying desperately to find policies that will get us out of our economic situation. Their first attempt to find a solution involved the national planning policy framework. There was no real evidence base for that proposal, but we none the less spent a happy spring and summer debating it. There was no evidence that relaxing planning permissions would give the kind of economic boost that we needed.
When we looked at the economy of Ireland, which has one of the most liberalised and disastrous planning systems in Europe, at the economy of Spain, with its equally unregulated planning system, and at the economy of Italy, it became clear that the deregulation of planning was not going to provide the economic boost that we were looking for. We went through chaos and U-turns with the national planning policy framework. It was an absurd idea, and we are now told that this legislation is the follow-up to it. I remember sitting through those debates, however, and no Minister at the Dispatch Box ever said, “Hold on, we’re going to come back with the Growth and Infrastructure Bill in the autumn. This is all part of a grand plan, an organic process, a strategy for growth.” No; we had an enjoyable debate on the framework and it was signed off, but there was no hint at that time that we would be back here debating these issues now.
We are back here debating these matters, however, and once again we have heard unpleasant abuse and ridicule being heaped on environmental and civil society groups such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which have dared to come up with objections to the growth-at-all-costs plans of this Government. The new planning Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), has called members of the National Trust “luddites” for daring to suggest that we should value such things as beauty and planning in our natural environment.
This is a dog’s dinner of a Bill, brilliantly dismantled by the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), in his clinical dismemberment of the provisions before the House. I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has beside him a copy of the report by Lord Heseltine, “No Stone Unturned”. If he turns to page 2 of that document, he will see a picture of Joseph Chamberlain, complete with an orchid on his jacket. If he turns to the final page, he will see a picture of Manchester town hall. The point of the Heseltine review is that it is a celebration of local government, of regional identity and of local civic pride. Yet, one week later, we are debating this Bill, which is all about the destruction of local democracy and the dismantlement of local action by local people.
Clause 1 is dirigiste and Napoleonic. Above all, it represents a massive U-turn by the Government from their localism agenda. We have only to look back to the passage of the Localism Act 2011, when the former planning Minister, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said that
“we should move away from a system of planning by development control, where recourse is made to the Planning Inspectorate rather than local decision makers, which is how the future of our communities has been developed. I want fewer appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and more decided locally.”—[Official Report, 17 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 273.]
[Interruption.] It is no wonder, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) says, that that Minister has now gone.
Instead, we are seeing a remarkable U-turn from localism to centralism, which is stripping designated local planning bodies of their capacities. We do not know how the capacities are going to be designated in the case of failing local authorities. When the Secretary of State was asked today for an example of such a local authority, he cited Hackney. We have discovered, however, that when efficiency and the time taken to process planning permissions are taken into account, there can be no suggestion that Hackney would fall into that category. The Secretary of State was making it up as he went along.
The language being used is instructive. It is the language of special measures, similar to that used of schools that the Secretary of State for Education deems to be failing. The same relentless centralism that we are seeing from the Department for Education is now being spread to local government. Any pretence of localism has ended today. There will be an end to pluralism and an end to natural rights, with no right of appeal.
Is the Bill a solution to the problem? We understand that there are problems promoting growth, but is further deregulation of the planning system the answer? I know that this Government are not particularly interested in evidence-based policy making, but the evidence suggests not. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Select Committee, set out in great detail, 87% of planning applications are approved and 400,000 new dwellings have approval. It is not the lack of planning policy that is preventing their development. More than 90% of applications are decided in 26 weeks. Where, then, is the problem when it comes to planning policy? As we know, the problem is the ability to gain mortgages, the lack of demand in the economy and the lack of confidence in the economy: none of these problems is going to be solved by this
kind of reform of the planning system. In fact, we shall see more confusion, more disarray and more delays in the planning system as a result of yet another bout of “initiative-itis” from the Government.
Again, where is the problem with the section 106 agreements? We have heard various curious statistics from the planning Minister, the basis of which he has refused to reveal. Everyone who has something to say about construction and development and the role of 106 agreements says that there is no problem with how these matters are currently dealt with. The provisions in the Bill could slow up development, as developers wait for changes to happen and will not get on with the construction that we all want to see.
Clause 21 deals with the major infrastructure regimes. It will continue the instability and the confusion. Under the clause, businesses and commercial projects of national significance can be taken into the hands of the Planning Inspectorate. However, these will not be subject to national planning policy statements, and we do not know whether retail parks or indeed leisure parks will be included, so all that the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), has tried to do with respect to high street development, the Portas review, city centre development and so forth could be undone at a stroke by what is in the Bill if development law suggests that retail parks assume this national development significance.
Let me deal with clause 7. As you well know, Mr Deputy Speaker, the national parks movement grew out of the inter-war sprawl when our natural environment was under attack. Our green and pleasant land was being ruined by urban sprawl and excessive deregulation. This was the precursor to the development of the green belt and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, but also to the national parks movement. The Bill begins the dismantling of that very important protection for our great landscapes of Exmoor, Dartmoor, the Lake district and the Peak district. It begins with broadband boxes, but then what? Once the sacrosanct nature of these developments is taken away, we will be on a very slippery slope.
Clause 23, which deals with employee owner shares, provides us with a sense of chaos in that we can go from national parks to employee owner schemes in the same Bill. How can that be any cohesive plan for economic development? As a rule of thumb, we can all agree that policies announced at the Tory party conference are never a particularly good idea. Labour Members adore shared ownership, as it is part of the heritage of mutualism, co-operatives and socialism, but we do not promote it at the expense of the fundamental rights of an employee. If we look at international examples, it does not seem to me that the great success of the German economy over the last 10 years was the result of an attack on employee rights in any shape or form.
This is a wretched little Bill, which should go no further. What is interesting is that it speaks to the current state of the Conservative party. I can trace no influences from the Liberal Democrats. We have heard speeches saying how bad the Bill is, but that they will have to vote for it. The most influential speech this afternoon was expressed, I felt, in the rather elegiac tones of the right hon. Member for Arundel and South
Downs (Nick Herbert), who lamented the loss of his vision of what this Government should be about, as localism and decentralisation died—sacrificed on the altar of a failing economic strategy as centralism took over. With that came an attack on what the Conservative party is meant to be about. What is it that they are “conserving”; what are they interested in looking after in this country? It is another assault on the British cityscape and on the British landscape.
Good planning—not confusion, disarray and hapless deregulation—is essential for sustainable economic growth. If we want growth and infrastructure, we need stability and order in the planning system, not this dog’s dinner of a Bill.
7.35 pm