My Lords, in moving Amendments 18 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Parminter, I will also speak to Amendment 25.
The whole of Clause 13 is somewhat out of place in the Bill. For the most part, the critics of the Bill, such as they have been, have looked at where it either goes slightly too far or does not go quite far enough. This clause does something completely different, which is entirely out of the context of the rest of the Bill. It has a very strong power for the Secretary of State to interfere with, change, direct or—as it puts it—“regulate” the kind of planning conditions local planning authorities can use.
New subsections (1) and (2) particularly do that. In Committee, the Government introduced a number of amendments, which were welcome but which essentially introduced the word “relevant” before a number of phrases, which might, in any case, have been superfluous and certainly did not affect the application of new subsections (1) and (2). In Committee, I asked the Minister to set out the Government’s intentions with Clause 13 as a whole and its two separate contexts. The first is a general capacity for the Secretary of State to introduce additional regulations on local planning authorities for every stage of the planning condition process. Within that, there is a subsection dealing with pre-commencement conditions. Amendment 18 deals with the generality and Amendment 25 with the specific case of the pre-commencement conditions.
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The Minister responded to a number of questions in Committee. In response to my direct question of whether the Government have any intention of introducing limitations on local authorities as regards introducing planning conditions—which they would otherwise have been able to put into force as a result of the National Planning Policy Framework—the Minister’s reply, as I understood it, was that there is no intention to restrict the capacity of local authorities to put into force relevant conditions that are themselves in conformity with the National Planning Policy Framework. I suggested to the Minister at that stage that redrafting to simply say that might make it much simpler and less challenging for those of us reading the legislation—and Amendment 18 says just that. The limitation on the Secretary of State when introducing his regulatory powers is that none of those powers can cut into the NPPF or reduce the capacity of local authorities to put in conditions, as long as they are in conformity with the NPPF. In other words, Amendment 18 puts in plain language what I understand to be the Government’s real intent.
If the amendment is to be resisted, there will linger in the mind the thought that it may be the intention of this Government—or a future one—to have in hand a
reserve power that would allow them to cut back or to change the NPPF. If that is their intention, it is for one thing extremely premature, as there is a review of the NPPF going on at the moment, and it would also be very damaging to the credibility of the NPPF that has built up on the basis of it being a sound document with very broad consent. There is currently very little dispute as to its relevance and applicability.
So far, the ministerial response to the drafting has been that, despite being a wide-ranging text, it is really only meant to deal with pre-commencement conditions. That was the point made repeatedly in Committee—I will come to Amendment 25 in a moment. It was asserted that there was no intention to cut away at the NPPF or to limit its use by LPAs when they put down conditions, and that it was entirely appropriate for them to refer to the NPPF in its entirety when deciding whether a condition was relevant. If all that is true, then my Amendment 18 is the one that the Government should adopt, because it places in the Bill precisely what the Government say the Bill is supposed to deliver.
There is a third argument that has been put forward, which is, “Trust me”. It was deployed by the noble Lord, Lord Young, when responding to Amendment 11, and I have to say that I can think of no better noble Lord in the whole House to be deployed to reassure us and say “Trust me” than the noble Lord, Lord Young. I thought he did so with customary eloquence and conviction. But the fact of the matter, sad as it is to report, is that the noble Lord will not necessarily, in perpetuity, be the one who exercises the relevant powers and issues the relevant regulations. Some of us would be quite happy—within certain limits, anyway—to say that he should be, but the reality is that we are putting in place legislation that can be operated by anybody who Her Majesty the Queen subsequently decides to appoint.
Amendment 18 is superior to the Government’s text and delivers what the Government say they want this particular clause to deliver. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Young, in doing an excellent job, explained that there was to be the most convoluted, circular and complex process to achieve exactly what I am asking for—a process where we can be satisfied because there would be all sorts of reference, the possibility for people to write to other people and to hold inquiries, and the possibility for this House and the other House to look at it twice. Why do all that? Why not simply say that the regulatory powers are limited to preventing local authorities from breaking the bounds set by the NPPF? I urge the Government Front Bench to take another look at that.
Amendment 25 relates particularly to the vexed issue of pre-commencement conditions. The noble Lord, Lord Young, produced the outstandingly shocking news that developers do not like planning applications. I would not have thought it difficult to get a developer to write a letter to say, “I do not like planning conditions”, but developers are not always the best judge of what makes a sensible planning condition. A developer in a rush may find a pre-commencement planning condition that says, “You must carry out a proper archaeological survey” as nothing but a waste of time and money—it
is only a pile of old stones. If a local authority cannot impose a pre-commencement condition relating to archaeological investigation as a result of some ministerial direction—well, I am sure that the Minister will reassure us that this is not the intention. He will say, I predict, that archaeology will still be permitted to be set as a pre-commencement condition, which I am pleased about. I could ask a whole lot of other questions and I am sure that he would say exactly the same to all of them: “The Government have no intention of introducing regulations”. When we get to the bottom of it, we will find that the line he has drawn is the line set by the National Planning Policy Framework. This is precisely why Amendment 25, tabled by me and my noble friend Lady Parminter and supported by my colleagues, simply says that, in relation to pre-commencement planning conditions, the Secretary of State can only make regulations that would limit any condition that goes beyond the very reasonable constraints set by the National Planning Policy Framework.
It may be that the Minister’s brief has a bullet-point, one-line zinger that shoots down both of these amendments—no doubt I shall hear it in due course. But every time this has been discussed—at Second Reading, in Committee, and indeed earlier today in relation to previous amendments—the Government have found it exceptionally difficult to show, on the one hand, why they need this power and, on the other, that they absolutely do not intend to interfere with the operation of the NPPF. This is a very narrow line, and I do not believe that I can be certain that the present text does not stand anywhere near that line. I offer to the House that Amendments 18 and 25 do stand exactly on that line, exactly where the Government say they want to stand, and exactly where I and my colleagues believe that they should stand. I beg to move.