My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords for appearing late but I have been performing duties for what I declare as an interest, as leader of a local authority which is a London borough. On my way to the Chamber I was listening to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on the annunciator and I have considerable sympathy with the spirit and thrust of all she has been arguing for in this Bill and indeed in the amendment before us. I rather agree with what my noble friend Lord Porter has just said, and I will come back to that in the question of the real non-accountability of the system operated by the Secretary of State in terms of the inspectorate, where there are overturns. I am really addressing my remarks to Amendment 6.
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One of the problems with the current system is that there is a lot of strain in it. I am very grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for the discussions that we have had on a vexed issue I brought before your Lordships on a previous Bill in relation to the automatic granting of permission to convert offices into residential property. I hope that I will not have to trouble your Lordships’ House with this matter, but I give notice that I may have to do so on the second day on Report. If we are not able to reach a satisfactory agreement on it, I will table an amendment which seeks to control the unlicensed passage of offices into residential property, but I hope that we may be able to make progress on that.
I mention it simply because the system is strained. When the Government intervene, when laws are passed, when expectations are given through neighbourhood planning and when the system becomes confused, people look for excuses and for slight ways not to twist the system but to mould it. People write to me and say, “Your people can’t give planning permission here without looking for an underground watercourse”, and so on. There is a lot of suspicion in the system, not in terms of the way it is necessarily operated by any individual local authority, but in the way the system as a whole seems to operate. We need clarity at every level.
I have huge sympathy with what my noble friend Lord Porter has said. I have equal sympathy with what my noble friend Lady Cumberlege has said. There must be some ground between where she is and where the Government have been formerly in terms of the absolute “must” in the amendment, which states that,
“the Secretary of State must uphold the decision of the local planning authority unless it contravenes”.
We have to acknowledge that there have been circumstances, because of the strains in the system that I have described, where local authorities have been slightly unreasonable in the way they have applied the law. There are legitimate appeals, so I think the amendment is correct in spirit but too absolute in its wording. I hope between now and Third Reading it might be possible for my noble friend on the Front Bench to give further encouragement to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege that one can find the right way forward.
As for distrust in the system, I do not disparage the professionalism of the inspectors in Bristol. However, do your Lordships think that the people that I and many other noble Lords in this Chamber represent are delighted when some written judgment comes down from Bristol? They really want to know a bit more about who has done it and why. I would like to shine the light a bit more on some of the individuals involved. I say “individuals”, because I know from my own local authority that some inspectors are very swift to overturn decisions and some are much more cautious to overturn decisions. I would not use the word “feral”, as used by the chairman of the Local Government Association—my noble friend Lord Porter—but let us say that there are differences in behaviour, as there are between animals and people.
I would also like to shine a little more accountability on the operation of this system. There are occasions where people sit in public hearings, but it is done in writing very often and is remote, and there is no remote democratic connection to suggest that the Secretary of State is theoretically responsible. This is why my noble friend’s amendment—and I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for speaking before him; I did not realise he was going to intervene—says that,
“the Secretary of State must uphold the decision of the local planning authority unless it contravenes a development scheme of national importance”.
We have to look at that, but that decision-making—that final thing—is not transparent or accountable enough, and the practice and behaviour of the inspectorate is not understood enough. This results in people feeling locally—both in neighbourhoods and in local authorities—that they are being overturned by unaccountable authorities, often at the behest of very powerful and, as they feel, well-connected developers. There definitely has to be a change somewhere, so I support the spirit of these amendments, but I think some of the wording needs to be negotiated and I hope that will be possible.