My Lords, this has been a really fascinating debate on a key part of the Bill. It has been good to hear voices with such great expertise and wisdom around the Chamber this evening. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. They have rightly emphasised the importance of a development system that is properly plan led. I greatly appreciate that.
If the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester has declared his passion for housing for older people, I should probably declare that mine is localism, devolution and community engagement. So I want to be optimistic about this Bill, but in these crucial aspects of planning I genuinely feel that it is going in the wrong direction.
I should probably give a brief confession that I am very bruised by experiences I have had relating to the planning system. Our Stevenage local plan, after some two and a half years of public engagement and consultation, a public inquiry which was extended to three weeks, which is quite unusual for a district local plan, and the approval of the inspector, was then called in by our local Member of Parliament and held by the Secretary of State for 451 days while we waited for a determination to be made about whether it could go ahead. It was eventually released under certain conditions, which I will not try noble Lords’ patience by going into. So the thought of this kind of centralising tendency in planning in the way proposed in the Bill makes me exceptionally nervous. I hope that explains a little bit why.
It was, as ever, a pleasure to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Young. I respect his great knowledge and expertise in these areas. It is very concerning that only 39% of local authorities have a local plan. One reason for that is that, if you do not have a local plan in place, developers can pitch up and do virtually whatever they want in your area because you cannot resist it. That is not the whole case because you can use an extant plan, but it is much more difficult to resist unwanted development. I completely support his points on stream- lining and simplifying the process.
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The noble Lord, Lord Young, also spoke about incentivising local authorities to get on with their plan-making and having some kind of enforcement in
place for those which do not. I think that is important. He pointed out the loophole around local authorities being able to update their plan without reverting to consultation processes. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised this as well. It is an important loophole that we could take the opportunity of this Bill to close.
The noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Young, raised issues about the extraordinary delay in the appointment of the task force in relation to older people’s housing. I hope that the Minister can give us some answers on that; if not here, then perhaps we can have a written response about the reasons for that delay. There are big issues around housing stock developed for people who need to move into supported or sheltered housing or specially adapted housing.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to the relationship between local plans and the NDMP and to what the extent the policies in the NPPF will be moved over into the NDMP remit. I am concerned about that as well. It is not clear enough in the Bill how that relationship is going to work. There are flaws in the system of the NPPF in any case, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to an inspector saying that this is outside their remit. If it is not in the inspectors’ remit, I do not know whose remit it is in. That reflects my comments that there may need to be consideration of the operation and resourcing of the Planning Inspectorate anyway as a result of this Bill. We should not leave that out of our considerations.
On Amendment 185, which would remove “strongly” from new subsection (5B), the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to the Government’s intention to restrict decisions other than those in accordance with the plan and said that that diminishes the role of the planning committee and increases the possibility of litigation. I absolutely agree. It is a great concern. Can the Minister shed any light on why “strongly” has been introduced in that clause? Again, if it is not possible to do that now, we will happily take an answer in writing.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, echoed our concerns about the centralising elements of the Bill, particularly in relation to Clause 87, which defines the NDMP. I support those comments. It is our major concern. Probably one of the major concerns about the Bill overall is this centralising proposal.
I support Amendment 221, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, on older people’s housing, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I would probably want to consider that that reflected a slightly wider group of housing. We have developed specific housing for people with learning disabilities. The people who go into that special type of housing support each other and are able to be supported better in that housing, and people with physical disabilities might also benefit from that type of housing. It might be worth thinking about widening that a bit as well when we get to later amendments. I am very grateful for the comments on that. As was said in that part of the debate, developers will always focus on the profitable side of housing, so we need to think about how we incentivise that type of building. There is a great role for social housing here, and I am sure we will have wider discussions about social housing as the Bill progresses.
I just want to comment on the points the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made. I spoke extensively on the inclusion of environmental provisions in the second group of amendments and I did not want to try the patience of the Committee by repeating myself. That is why I perhaps did not cover that in enough detail in this group, but of course we believe it is a great omission for the Bill not to have it firmly embedded in statute. We must look at the very key issues around climate change and the environment on the face of the Bill.
I hope I have given a good summary of what noble Lords have said. It has been a very interesting debate and we retain our concerns about the centralising tendency of this planning section of the Bill. I hope the Minister has heard the strength of feeling in the Committee on these matters and I look forward to hearing her comments.