My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 27, 28, 29 and 35 in the group. Amendments 2 and 35 have to an extent been the subject of some discussion on the prior amendments. The 11th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee draws the provisions of Clause 1 to the attention of the House. Specifically, it emphasises the point that, whatever the declared intent, the Bill does not specify the criteria for designation or provide for them to be set down in an instrument subject to parliamentary procedure. That is what the amendment seeks to rectify. Amendment 35 requires that there is an affirmative procedure. To emphasise that point, Clause 1(8) states:
“The Secretary of State must publish (in such manner as the Secretary of State thinks fit) … the criteria”.
It is good that they must be published and not kept secret but there is no parliamentary process attached. Whatever the Secretary of State wishes to publish in accordance with the Bill, he can do so.
While the clause has been represented as having very limited application, it enables a profound shift in process and, indeed, in principle by removing from democratically elected councils the first engagement with a planning application, undermining the role of local accountability. We will debate elsewhere whether such a designation process should apply and what the appropriate criteria should be, and we will pursue the point that planning should be not just about process but quality outcomes. The Delegated Powers Committee said that they must merely be published. Accordingly, although each local planning authority might be designated individually, the power may be used by this or a future Government to designate a significant proportion of local planning authorities based on criteria that have no relevance to poor performance. My noble friend Lord Adonis made that point. Essentially the door would be open for a fundamental undermining of the planning system as we have known it since 1947. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee was absolutely right to express its concerns.
In its consultation document, Planning Performance and the Planning Guarantee—the consultation has ended, as we have heard, although we may not get the full response by Report—the Government set out their view on the threshold for very poor performance, when,
“30% or fewer major applications have been determined within the statutory period or more than 20% of major decisions have been overturned at appeal”.
However, paragraph 45 of the document very clearly states:
“We also propose raising the bar for the speed of decisions after the first year”,
so who knows where this will end up if it is just up to the Secretary of State to publish what is in his mind at any one point? Whatever the current Secretary of State’s intentions we must not have such a wide and unfettered power unchecked in primary legislation.
Amendment 29 requires the length of the designation to be identified and, more importantly, what must be achieved for the designation to be removed. It should mean that a qualitative assessment must be made on a case-by-case basis of where a local authority is failing. LPAs that fail on the designation criteria in the Government’s terms will not necessarily all do so for the same reason. The government consultation suggests that designation will last at least for a year but will be subject to review before the end of the year. This is all very well, but if there is no initial assessment of the problems a local authority faces, how will improvement be judged? Speed of dealing with minor applications may be irrelevant; indeed, this aspect of activity may already be more than satisfactory on the Government’s criteria. Once designation is made, whether the local planning authority can show any improvement in handling major applications is entirely outside its control. The noble Baroness made the point in response to the previous debate that it will depend on whether any applicants choose to submit locally, and how many to the Secretary of State. Improvement should be about
focusing resources, skills and culture, and performance, and it is also about the training of counsellors. If central government is to remove planning powers for a local authority it must be incumbent on the Secretary of State to make a proper case-by-case assessment of why and how the authority is failing, and how it can be supported.
Amendment 28 is very much by way of a fallback position. If the Secretary of State is to proceed by just publishing criteria, as the Bill currently allows, at the very least for that to happen, there must be a proper consultation. The Secretary of State may argue that one has just closed, but, sadly, it looks as though we will not see the full government response to it before we complete our deliberations. Amendment 27 rightly subjects these provisions to the need for a parliamentary process, which is provided for in Amendment 35.
There are three other amendments in this group, but I will not deal with them in detail until the noble Lords who tabled them have had a chance to speak to them. We support the thrust of Amendment 8, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and of Amendments 33 and 34, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which spell out issues in a very helpful and focused way. I beg to move.
5.15 pm