HC Deb 16 April 1969 vol 781 cc1281-8

10.1 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin (Wanstead and Woodford)

I beg to move, That the Control of Office Development (Exemption Limit) Order, 1969 (S.I., 1969, No. 174), dated 14th February, 1969, a copy of which was laid before this House on 24th February, be withdrawn.

Mr. Speaker

I suggest that with this we take the second Motion; That the Control of Office Development (Designation of Areas) (Variation) Order 1969 (S.I., 1969, No. 173), dated 14th February, 1969, a copy of which was laid before this House on 24th February, be withdrawn. Both are aspects of the same problem.

Mr. Jenkin

I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for suggesting that we take the two together.

I fear that I cannot promise the degree of philosophic contemplation in this matter which the Financial Secretary enjoined on us all in a speech which we much enjoyed. This is a rather down-to-earth, dry-as-dust matter, and I shall deal with it fairly briefly.

The two Orders represent a relaxation of the Government's control over office development. I must make it perfectly clear that the Opposition do not intend to divide the House on these Motions and that we have tabled them in order to give an opportunity to comment on the Government's policy as contained in the two Orders and to question the Government's intention in the light of the situation which has been created by their introduction.

The first removes substantial areas of the country altogether from the control of the office development procedure. The areas excluded now include the East Anglian planning region and a number of mainly rural areas in the East and West Midlands planning regions.

The second, somewhat different, is also a relaxation. It raises the exemption limit for office development requiring consent from 3,000 sq. ft. to 10,000 sq. ft. in the Metropolitan region outside the area of the Greater London Council. I remind the House that the Metropolitan region is a substantial area stretching from Hampshire in the west to Southend in the east and a comparable area north and south.

Together the two Orders represent a further significant and welcome dismantling of the system of control of office development and it is worth spending a moment looking at what one might call the rise and fall of the Government's policy of control of office development.

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member must not look too widely into it. He must examine it closely in the context of the Orders.

Mr. Jenkin

It will be in that context and I shall be extremely brief. I remind the House that the system was announced by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. George Brown) with a flourish of trumpets in November, 1964, and was stated then to extend to the Metropolitan region only and to be limited to development above 3,000 sq. ft.

In August, 1965, the Act was passed to give effect to that announcement, with retrospective operation for the Metropolitan region. At the same time the Birmingham conurbation was added and a year later, in July, 1966, the area was further extended to include the West Midlands and the whole of South-East England, all with the limit of 3,000 sq. ft. This represented the high-water mark of the policy. A year later, in July, 1967, the dismantling began. In the first place there was an Order raising the exemption limit outside the Metropolitan region from 3,000 sq. ft. to 10,000 sq. ft. so that a very large number of smaller offices were at once removed from control. Perhaps even more significantly as it turned out, the then President of the Board of Trade in a Written Answer on 18th July said: I propose to give greater weight to the needs of physical planning, and the efficient use of labour put forward by those office employers, including local authorities, who are unable to move from the South-East and who wish to build offices."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th July 1967; Vol. 750, c. 247.] This little-noticed Written Answer, coupled with the Order passed at the time, has had a remarkable effect on the administration of the system since then. Perhaps one can analyse what has happened and get into the position of seeing how the present Orders operate by dividing the period from January, 1966, to December, 1968, into two equal 18 month periods, with the watershed of July, 1967 in the middle. Therefore we have two periods of six quarters each.

One would expect to find as a result of the 1967 Order raising the exemption limit outside the Metropolitan area, that overall there would have been, perhaps even a reduction, but certainly no increase in the amount of permits approved, because a large number of smaller offices would be outside control. Quite the opposite has happened. The area approved increased greatly in the second six quarter period over the first, and furthermore the nearer one gets to Central London the greater has been the increase. Taking the first period, January, 1966, to June, 1967, the total permits approved were just under 12 million sq. ft. In the succeeding eighteen months this increased to over 18 million sq. ft., a 50 per cent. increase.

Mr. Speaker

Order. With respect, we are not discussing the Parent Act and its history. We are discussing two proposed modifications, and the hon. Gentleman must come to them.

Mr. Jenkin

To put these two modifications into context and to reach the comment I have to make, with respect it is important that we should see how the development has moved in the course of the last eighteen months.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I must protect debates on Statutory Instruments. If we go too elaborately into the context then we discuss the Parent Act. There are two modifications proposed in these Orders, as the hon. Gentleman knows. He must come to them.

Mr. Jenkin

I will bow to your Ruling and will merely draw the attention of the House to the extent to which the policy has been eroded by the much freer consents that have been given, in the South-East region, in the Metropolitan region, and still more in the Greater London area, and even more so in the central area of Greater London.

In my two eighteen month periods, in the central London area the number of consents, in the last eighteen months, was over three times the figure in the first eighteen months. I come to the conclusion that, not only was there a legal dismantling in 1967, of which these two Orders are a further stage, but that there has also been a considerable relaxation of the policy.

In view of the two further measures of dismantling which these Orders embody—the removal of huge areas from control altogether, and the raising of the limit throughout the Outer Metropolitan area—one asks what control is left, and for how long and how should it be operated?

Mr. Speaker

Order. The Minister of State will not be able to tell the hon. Gentleman what control is left and for how long it should be operated.

Mr. Jenkin

This makes matters extremely difficult, Mr. Speaker. There is virtually nothing to be said about these Orders unless we consider them in the context of the policy of which they are intended to be part. If we are precluded from examining the Government's intentions and policy as exemplified in the Orders, the debate is so circumscribed as to be hardly worth while. You are placing me in considerable difficulty, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker

Order. Mr. Speaker did not choose that this debate should take place. It is taking place on two Statutory Instruments. The hon. Gentleman knows the rules of debate on Statutory Instruments.

Mr. Jenkin

I defer to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker.

Would not the remaining power be more effectively operated by the local authority? The substantially remaining power is necessary in central London. I do not deny that something on these lines should remain in existence for the time being. That is the view of the Greater London Council as evidenced in its recently published development plan.

The question which I am tempted to ask—I do not know whether the Minister of State will feel able, within the rules of order, to answer it—is this: if the control remains as limited by these Orders, is there not a case for it to be operated in future as part of the planning procedures of the local authority rather than as a separate controlling function of the Board of Trade? It is in central London and, to a lesser extent, in the rest of the Greater London Area that there is still need for office control. The effect of the Orders is substantially to limit the control to that. There is, therefore, some case for entrusting the future administration of the control to the Greater London Council.

I have made it clear that we welcome the Orders, representing as they do a further dismantling of a control over most of the country which we always regarded as unnecessary. The Orders raise important questions of future policy. If the Minister of State feels able, and if you, Mr. Speaker, feel able to allow him within the rules of order, to answer the questions about the consequences of these Orders for the future policy of the Government, the House will be very appreciative.

10.13 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Edmund Dell)

These two Orders merely represent administrative simplifications of the office development control. The hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Patrick Jenkin) suggests that they represent an erosion of that control. I do not believe that they do. He has misinterpreted the figures which he quoted. The reason why the number of certificates issued has increased is very simple. Applicants have to satisfy two conditions. They have to prove that they are tied to the control area, and they have to show that no alternative accommodation is available.

One of the things that has been happening due to the operation of the control is that an amount of space in the pipeline has been used up and, therefore, it is now clearly necessary to grant more permits. It is an inevitable fact that more permits will be granted. This does not mean that the control is being eroded. It means, on the contrary, that the control is being exercised sensibly and flexibly in accordance with the criteria indicated at the time the control was introduced.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the purpose of the Orders. Their purpose is simply administrative simplification. I should like to give examples. Take, for example, the exclusion of East Anglia. Since the control was extended to East Anglia in July, 1966, 62 permits have been issued for a total net area of 637,000 sq. ft. of offices and there have been only two refusals. This shows that it is now sensible to exclude East Anglia.

Similarly, if we take the four Midland areas excluded from the control, only 19 office permits have been issued since July, 1966, for a net area of 230,000 sq. ft. and there has been one refusal. Again, it seems sensible against the background of these facts to simplify the administration. It saves staff and costs.

There is a similar practical reason for making the other change and raising the exemption limit in the outer metropolitan region to 10,000 sq. ft. Examination of applications for office projects in that area showed that over three-quarters were under 10,000 sq. ft. in size and these were almost all for offices providing local services. In 1968, for instance, of the 237 applications for office permits in the 3,000 to 10,000 sq. ft. range, less than 7 per cent. were refused. Here again, in a situation in which applications for permits for smaller schemes take a lot of time, it seems sensible to introduce this further degree of administrative simplification.

This has also enabled us to meet arguments put forward by the Economic Planning Council for East Anglia in its Report, "East Anglia—A Study" which pointed out that the proportion of office workers to all workers was lower there than in the country as a whole and much lower than in the South-East. The Planning Council stressed the need for more office employment to cater for the expanding population of working age. It pointed to the suitability of many places in the region for office development. We have met these points.

Similarly we have met points which were put to us by the South-East Planning Council, which put forward the view that for some office firms now situated in central London for whom a move of any distance was out of the question, the most favoured alternative location was in the outer metropolitan region. Therefore, and to encourage smaller firms to decentralise, the council suggested the raising of the exemption limit in those areas to 10,000 sq. ft. We have been able to accept its recommendation. We also consulted the Location of Offices Bureau and we have benefited by the advice we have received from it. I emphasise once more that these are nothing more than administrative simplications.

The hon. Gentleman asked me to speculate on whether this was not a power which would be more suitably exercised by local planning authorities. I do not think that it is such a power. In the given circumstances, the requirement to avoid congestion, which was the essential basis which led the Government to introduce this power could not possibly be exercised by local planning authorities.

I hope that the House, taking account of the explanations which I have given, will allow the Orders to stand. They are sensible and I am sure that they are generally welcome. I note that they are welcome also to the Opposition.

Question put and negatived.

Motion made, and Question, That the Control of Office Development (Designation of Areas) (Variation) Order 1969 (S.I., 1969, No. 173), dated 14th February 1969, a copy of which was laid before this House on 24th February, be withdrawn—[Mr. Patrick Jenkin]— put and negatived.