My Lords, the facts around our concerns regarding NDMPs have been very well expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, so I will not waste the time of the House repeating them. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, shows the real dilemma around content and demarcation with regard to NDMPs and local plans. Together, these amendments demonstrate just how much uncertainty and potential for conflict there is regarding this bold and radical change. These concerns are expressed across all parties and sectors, which is why I believe that the amendment in my name is crucial to allaying some of these very legitimate concerns.
My amendment would ensure that NDMPs receive full public and parliamentary scrutiny. It was drafted by the Better Planning Coalition and is supported by the RTPI, the National Trust, CPRE, Friends of the Earth, the TCPA and many other organisations. National development management plans could and should be a bold and positive possibility to reform the system radically, or they could be a centralising power grab designed to minimise the voice of the community. Whichever view noble Lords and those organisations take individually, what unites them is that they agree that this is an important amendment for one very strong and principled reason.
As drafted, NDMPs come with no minimum public consultation or parliamentary scrutiny requirements. Please just let that sink in: there is no agreed consultation and scrutiny process enshrined in the legislation. This greatly heightens the risk that they will turn out to be a power grab rather than a positive reform.
To add further to our concern, and as has been expressed by other noble Lords, the contents of NDMPs are as yet undefined. We have a blank page. We may well be able to guess some of the content from some of the NPPF consultation, but ostensibly we still do not know what it is going to be.
It is worth reminding ourselves of what Clause 88 says. It states:
“A ‘national development management policy’ is a policy (however expressed) of the Secretary of State in relation to the development or use of land in England”.
Note those very powerful words, “however expressed”. We are used to being asked to agree a process of accepting policies of national importance when we do not know what they are and there is no formal right to parliamentary scrutiny. As of now, those policies could relate to absolutely anything. We may have some familiarity with them, but what we do not know is whether they are going to be tweaked, changed a bit or replaced by completely new policies. The level of uncertainty is just not acceptable.
The Minister will no doubt say that Clause 87 imposes an obligation on the Secretary of State to ensure that consultation, which is not defined, takes place on NDMPs, but—and it is a big but—the legislation also allows Ministers the discretion to define exactly what consultation is appropriate for their policies. This cannot be right.
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As the Bill stands, NDMPs will have primacy over local plans if they are in conflict. As such, they hand significant powers to Ministers to change planning law as they wish—a concern compounded by the regular churn in relevant government Ministers. There have been six local government Secretaries of State since 2018, or seven if you count Michael Gove twice, and the current Housing Minister, Rachel Maclean, is the 15th since 2010. As a result of that, the earlier comment from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, rings rather true.
My amendment mirrors exactly what happens now with national policy statements; that is why it is so lengthy, as some noble Lords have mentioned to me when we have been discussing it. So my key question for the Minister is quite simple: why should the much more significant—as they will apply in far many more instances and be broader—national development management policies be any less scrutinised and accountable than the current national policy statements?
In the other place, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee clearly agreed that the amendment is needed and recently recommended:
“Each draft NDMP should be subject to full and proper parliamentary scrutiny before coming into force. Any draft NDMP which would have the effect of superseding the plan-led system should be carefully considered in Parliament on a case-by-case basis. The Government should table an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to make NDMPs subject to similar parliamentary requirements as National Policy Statements, as outlined in section 9 of the Planning Act 2008”.
This amendment tabled in my name does just that.
The Minister has said that a legal safeguard to ensure scrutiny of NDMPs will render them ineffective to address urgent situations. However, emergencies would surely be accompanied by their own necessary primary legislation, with the co-operation of this House, as happened during the pandemic. Ministers also have a range of other mechanisms they can use in normal times, as with the Minister’s recent ministerial Statement on housing targets, to set policy direction that local
authorities and developers must take full note of in plan-making and planning decisions. This amendment deals with how NDMPs are made and modified in normal times. As these issues are of sufficient national significance, we would expect to treat them as we currently treat national policy statements.
In Committee, concerns were raised by Peers across the House about the degree of centralisation these changes represent. This amendment addresses those concerns by ensuring that both parliamentary scrutiny and a minimum level of public scrutiny is required for the designation and review of national development management policies, and this will be based on processes set out currently for national planning statements.
NDMPs will be used in ministerial decision-making, quite rightly, as they will form the basis for any called-in decisions going forward, alongside development plan policies. They will therefore be used by Ministers in the same way as NPSs. There should be an absolute commitment to public and parliamentary scrutiny rather than it being left to another Secretary of State—the more so as we do not know what these polices will contain or what the justification for them will be.
This Better Planning Coalition amendment protects the right of the public and Parliament to have a say in planning policy and aligns the Bill’s planning powers with existing processes. I was delighted to get support from the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Carrington, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her support from the Labour Front Bench. If there is no significant reassurance from the Minister, I will put this matter to a vote of the House.