TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING APPEALS (AMENDMENT) (SCOTLAND) (Hansard, 5 May 1970)

§ Mr. N. R. Wylie (Edinburgh, Pentlands)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal Part III (Appeals) of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1969.
I know that a very important debate is about to take place, so I shall keep my remarks as short as possible in seeking the permission of the House to introduce my Bill. On the other hand, it concerns a matter about which we may be able to do something, whereas the debate that is to follow is rather questionable.
The Bill is concerned with certain provisions of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1969, and raises issues which were debated at some length in the Scottish Standing Committee exactly a year ago today.
It would be appropriate if I explained shortly the background to the legislative provisions which I seek to excise from the Statute Book. In Scotland—[Interruption]. If I may have the attention of the House for a few minutes; I will be as brief as I can—if an application is made for planning permission, and if that application is refused by the planning authority, or if planning permission is given subject to conditions which are unacceptable to the applicant, there is, under present legislation, a right of appeal to the Secretary of State.
Except in very special circumstances, the Secretary of State then orders a public inquiry—and appoints a person called a reporter to hold it. After hearing the evidence and the submissions made on behalf of the various parties, the reporter reports to the Secretary of State and makes recommendations.
This procedure is rather different from the procedure, as I understand it, followed in England and Wales, because there the remit to an inquiry is made to a full-time salaried officer called an inspector and reliance is placed on him— [Interruption]—to make his recommendations. In Scotland, on the other hand, this matter is normally dealt with—

§ Mr. James Davidson (Aberdeenshire, West)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. 205 Some of us are very interested in this Bill, but there is such a hubbub of conversation that we cannot hear what the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) is saying.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. James Davidson). The House insists that Ten-Minute Rule Bills be taken at this time and it must listen.

§ Mr. Wylie
I am obliged to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. James Davidson), who supported my argument on this matter a year ago.
What normally happens in Scotland is that the matter is remitted to a reporter. who is sometimes a member of the Bar, sometimes a retired civil servant and sometimes, indeed, a solicitor. The appointments are made on an ad hoc basis. They are not made to salaried officials of the Secretary of State. The second feature of the system which I regard as important is that the final decision on a matter of this nature is reached by the Secretary of State himself when an appeal is made.
The system has over the years worked very well indeed from two points of view. First, it has worked well from the point of view of the member of the public who appeals against a decision of the local planning authority because the process by which the hearing is conducted is quasi-judicial and is one in which the public have confidence. Secondly, it has worked well from the point of view of public interest, because the decision of the Secretary of State is one which he makes in the public interest and it is essentially an administrative decision.
So here we have a system in which the public have confidence and in which the Secretary of State takes an administrative decision in the general interest. I believe that it has been possible to operate the system in Scotland—although I can well understand why it may not be possible to do so in England—for two primary reasons. One is that the number of appeals against planning decisions in Scotland is relatively small—no more than 300 or perhaps 400 a year—whereas in England and Wales the number runs to about 14,000.
The second and primary reason why the system has worked fairly well in Scotland over the years, particularly recently, 206 is because we have in Scotland a planning department under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State which brings all planning matters as it were under one roof. It is possible in this way to treat all planning considerations on application or appeal at one and the same time. We do not have to go from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, for example, to the Ministry of Transport, and so on, to get their views on different aspects of the problem. The system works very well indeed.
But Part III of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1969, sought to introduce an entirely novel proposition into our planning law. In the first place, it introduced what was for Scotland the entirely new concept of a full-time permanent inspectorate in place of the ad hoc appointments to which I have referred. Secondly, it will delegate, when the provisions of the Measure are activated, to the inspectorate, except in special cases, the ultimate decision of the matter instead of the Secretary of State himself taking the decisions. Both these proposals are to be deplored.
In the first place, the idea of introducing a permanent inspectorate is not appropriate to Scotland. We do not need it and I think that it is calculated to destroy the confidence which the public in Scotland have in the planning system. Secondly, and perhaps even more important, it deprives the Secretary of State of the right to take a decision on a planning matter himself. He is functus, as it were, after he has made a remit. On both grounds, these are propositions which should be opposed.
The only reason adduced for the changes was largely speculative. It was suggested by the Minister of State that there was going to be a vast increase in the number of appeals. But the Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland strongly recommended that the Secretary of State should retain his jurisdiction because there was no likelihood, in its view, in the foreseeable future of planning appeals arising to the extent to which it would introduce a complication.
If I am given leave to introduce the Bill, I would like to expand it to stop the provisions in the 1969 Act which enable a local authority to decide an issue to which it is itself a party. It is wrong in principle that a party to litigation or an 207 inquiry should itself decide the outcome. I can think of nothing more calculated to destroy public confidence in our planning system than a proposition of that kind. For all these reasons, I ask leave of the House to introduce this short, but important Measure.