Title (Hansard, 11 June 1969)

§ Mr. Ross
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
At this stage in the Bill's progress, and at this late hour, I have no wish to detain the House with a long speech. But it is only right to pay tribute to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have applied themselves to the technical difficulties of the Bill. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister of State was appreciative of the progress which was made in Committee. There have been disagreements—that was inevitable—but a number of real improvements to the Bill have resulted.
This is one of the Government's modernising Measures. Its principal aim is to make new provision for development plans which, in their 1947 form, no longer fully serve the needs of society. This has been borne in on us for a long time by the people most intimately concerned. The plans themselves will be more flexible and comprehensive in future. Far more responsibility for them will be placed on the local planning authority, and much greater opportunity will be provided for the participation of the public during their formation.
These are the really big changes that the Bill makes. The opportunity has been taken to provide for a large number of other improvements in various departments of planning law, such as the enforcement of planning control, the machinery of land acquisition, the care of buildings of architectural or historic interest, and in many other fields.
I know that it has been argued that it is premature and that Scotland is not yet ready for this Measure and that we should have waited until the Royal Commission on Local Government had reported. I do not doubt that that would have been followed by the suggestion that we should wait until it was implemented. 1628 That is how we get delay in relation to a problem which has been obvious to us for quite a time. This criticism is completely misconceived. It would be folly to postpone the introduction of the new system of development planning with all its advantages until an indefinite date in future. There is nothing in the development plan provisions of the Bill that either prejudices or pre-empts decisions about the scope of local planning authority areas. Indeed, there is everything to be said for seeking co-operation now and accustoming local authorities to the new outlook to the greatest extent possible.
I feel that in this new legislation we are laying the foundation of the system of town and country planning that will last for quite a time. I am proud to ask the House to give the Bill a Third Reading.

§ Mr. Wylie
Mr. Deputy Speaker, on listening to our deliberations, it may not have occurred to you that this is a Bill to which we gave a general welcome. We have all along recognised that changes were desirable in the planning field, and the Second Reading debate on this legislation made our position perfectly clear, as I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree. Just as the 1947 Act laid the basis of post-war development for almost a quarter of a century, so the basis of this legislation will set the pattern of our development during the closing years of this century, and we welcome it.
We welcome in particular the distinction which is being drawn between the structure plan and the local plan, because that is surely in accordance with all modern principles of regional planning. But we must put on record our concern about the absence of the appropriate machinery. I think that the right level of responsibility has to be struck. The authority responsible for the structure plan cannot properly be the same authority responsible for the local plan, and as the Bill stands that is what it says.
We have never argued that this Bill should be delayed until the Royal Commission on Local Government has reported. We cannot wait for this legislation until the Royal Commission's report is implemented, because that may 1629 take many years. This has to come now, in advance of those proceedings. It may be that the Royal Commission's report and the new structure of local government following thereon will set up a 2-tier system in which the structure plan responsibility will be in the top tier. I am not sure that it necessarily follows that the top-tier authorities recommended by the Wheatley Commission will necessarily be the most appropriate bodies or groupings for planning purposes. It may be that some other grouping for planning purposes will be more desirable. It is therefore better that it should be left flexible until we see how the thing works out, but two tiers of responsibility are obviously necessary and desirable.
The features of the Bill which we strongly dislike have been argued in Committee, and we are indebted to Mr. Speaker for selecting these crucial issues of principle for debate again on the Floor of the House.
The Planning Advisory Group report was in a sense a United Kingdom report in so far as it recommended basic changes in the structure of planning for both countries—the structure plan, the local plan, and so on—but in so far as it related to changes in the relationship between the central Government and local government, and in so far as it related to the things that we were talking about earlier tonight, it seemed to be concerned wholly with problems in England, and we repeat that we regard the proposals for objections to the local plan to be decided in the last resort by the local authority, the delegation of planning responsibility by the Secretary of State to individual persons appointed by him, and the delegation by local planning authorities of their power to named officials, as bad tendencies, and we very much regret that those features of the Bill have survived the Committee and Report stages.
With that qualification we give a general welcome to the Bill, and we look forward to seeing how it works in practice.

Earl of Dalkeith
I rise to place on record the view that Part V which deals with buildings of architectural and historic interest is a major step forward in 1630 achieving the preservation which so many people, societies, and bodies want to see, and I sincerely hope that it will do what we hope it will do.
I am a little disappointed that so many of the societies which are so vocal when it is usually too late to do something about preserving buildings have come forward and given us the minimum of help in ensuring that we get this legislation right. I think that perhaps with luck the Minister and his advisers have produced something that is very worthwhile, and I hope that the Bill will achieve what we all hope to achieve.

§ Mr. Gordon Campbell
I should like to associate myself with what the Secretary of State said about the work done on the Bill by hon. Members on both sides. I pay tribute to the Minister of State, who has handled it more or less on his own all the way through.
We thought that new legislation on planning in Scotland was necessary now. We have not suggested that it should be postponed, but we had hoped that more progress would have been made by now in the reform of local government, and that, having started six years ago, we would have proposals before us which we could have related to the provisions of the Bill. We do not want to postpone the changes needed. We have objections to some of the procedures, but we hope that this will give us a pattern of planning procedures in Scotland which can be used successfully by the present local authorities and that new ones, eventually, and that many changes will not be necessary for some years to come.