HC Deb 04 May 1999 vol 330 cc826-33
Mr. Ottaway

I beg to move amendment No. 135, in page 139, leave out lines 8 to 24.

In Standing Committee, there was a considerable amount of debate over the mayor's planning powers and the scope of the spatial development strategy in its interaction with the London boroughs. There is no doubt that if ever there was a point of clash and conflict between the new authority and the London boroughs, it would be that of planning. While the Bill was in Standing Committee, the Minister announced in response to a parliamentary question that he had—I wanted to say "climbed down", but perhaps that is unfair—relaxed or softened the threshold at which the mayor could or could not intervene. Perhaps it would be better to say that he had raised the threshold. There are now fewer areas in which the mayor can intervene with his spatial development strategy.

In Standing Committee, I quoted extensively from Estates Gazette, because a number of learned people in the property world were most concerned. The Minister will be comforted to learn that Estates Gazette has now praised—slightly unfairly—his policy U-turn. I would call it a relaxation. Estates Gazette stated:

Helical Bar's Gerald Kaye said: 'Inserting another raft of controls is unnecessary. Anything that reduces those restrictions is to be welcomed.' Simon Silver of Derwent Valley said: 'I'd be glad if they've scaled it back, it's another tier of red tape.' The Minister could say that his parliamentary reply received one, or perhaps two, cheers from the property sector. Nevertheless, the fundamental concerns that existed in the Standing Committee still exist. We are justified in tabling the amendment and in asking the Government to spell out exactly how they intend to proceed.

The Government propose to add an unnecessary third tier to planning control in London, by allowing the mayor to direct local authorities to refuse planning permissions. That is a fairly odd state of affairs for the following reasons. The proposals have caused considerable concern in planning and development circles. In the view of Conservative Members and of those in the development world, the proposals are unnecessary; they will cause delay, uncertainty and confusion. They add bureaucracy and harm competitiveness—in all honesty, the City of London's greatest concern is that its ability to compete with, for example, Frankfurt will be damaged. Following the Standing Committee, we must add to that indictment of the Government's proposals the charge of total incoherence.

Ministers say that, like the spatial development strategy, the mayor's power of direction is confined to matters of strategic importance; however, unlike their action in respect of the spatial development strategy, they refuse to write that into the Bill. The result is that local authorities and the Secretary of State have to apply a presumption in favour of the development plan when determining planning applications and appeals, but the mayor does not have to do so—he can ignore that cornerstone of planning law. That is a confusing state of affairs, to say the least.

To add a third tier of confusion, in Committee, Ministers tabled an amendment to allow the Secretary of State to prohibit the London boroughs from acting on the mayor's direction. The Minister said that that would apply while the Secretary of State decided whether to call in an application. However, the application would go to the Secretary of State anyway, on appeal. I tabled a parliamentary question asking the Secretary of State how many planning applications the Labour Government had called in after the relevant local authority had decided to refuse permission; the answer was not only unusually short, but unusually informative: none. Therefore, it is inconceivable that the power of call-in will be exercised in the manner suggested by Ministers.

Either Ministers do not understand the ministerial call-in, or the real purpose of the provision is to allow the Secretary of State to overrule the mayor. Throughout, we have argued that the mayor's power to direct refusal is unnecessary because it damages the competitiveness of London and is a bureaucratic muddle, but it now appears to be a ministerial muddle that could best be cleared up by deleting the provision from the Bill.

The Minister must realise that serious sums of money are involved, and that development is instrumental in and relevant to the prosperity of London's economy. The plain truth is that, if the planning system is such that it undermines confidence or causes concern in the development world, there will be no development. The Government should think hard about the mismatch in the powers of call-in in the Bill.

Mr. St. Aubyn

I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway) and I share his confusion about the Government's true intentions. I speak as one who, for several years, served on a local authority planning committee in central London. I was serving when the old GLC was abolished and recall that, in our part of London, there were peals of joy at that unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, which second-guessed and oversaw all our planning decisions, being done away with. At that time, the planning committee for Westminster council was considering early proposals for the development of Covent Garden, and I well remember what a blessed release the abolition of the GLC was to those of us who wanted a new and thriving Covent Garden, because it meant that the proposals would not suffer further delay by being subjected by that authority to trial by fire.

My concern about section 21A(9) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which the Bill would add to that Act and the amendment would delete from the Bill, is that there appears to be no limit on how detailed the powers of the mayor might become. I agree with my hon. Friend that development activity in London would be curtailed and discouraged, and that it would cost more. I am sure Ministers understand that the longer and more uncertain the planning process, the harder it is to justify. Therefore, the developers' profits must be much greater before they are prepared to take a risk.

11.15 pm

It is worth considering what has happened to London in the years since the abolition of that centralised planning authority. Has London fallen apart? Has its pre-eminence vanished? On the contrary, for the past seven years, European business leaders have voted London the best city for business. London has left cities such as Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt in its wake. That is what has happened since that centralising force was abolished and the planning process was speeded up. That is a great tribute to the wisdom of the central London boroughs, which understood exactly what businesses needed and how to balance those needs.

I remember a proposal in the early days to return to residential accommodation some of the houses in central London that were developed into offices after the war. That happens all over the place now, but it was a rather revolutionary idea in the early 1980s. I have no doubt that the Greater London council would have stopped that change of use in its tracks. It would have regarded the proposal as appealing to the overly wealthy without recognising that there is an important constituency in central London that helps businesses to thrive and with which the local council—in this case, Westminster—was far more in tune than the GLC.

There is also a confidentiality aspect. In the course of our discussions, which enjoyed cross-party agreement within the council, we became aware of the extreme commercial sensitivity of the matters under consideration. We were advised by our officers that, if certain information was revealed to the wider world, it could have an impact measurable in tens of millions of pounds in today's money. To the council's great credit—it was also proof of its probity—that did not happen. By retaining the confidentiality of all concerned, a change of policy and a very satisfactory result was achieved in central London. Many former offices became residential accommodation, in line with the wider planning process, and the wider needs of London and the heritage lobby, which has not stopped singing the praises of that policy.

Imagine what would happen if such a proposal were advanced under this Bill. What reassurances can the Minister provide that confidentiality will be maintained? How may we be assured that a future mayor of London, who may not be in tune with the planning needs of a particular borough, will understand the import of such a decision? How can we be sure that a mayor of London who is hostile to the political direction and will of the people of a particular borough will not use the Bill's powers to frustrate them?

I alight upon an example from my ward of Paddington and Little Venice, which I represented for four years. A group of houses in the area had been used as hotel accommodation. However, when the hotel closed and the accommodation was no longer required by the national company involved, it was proposed to develop the houses either as a rehabilitation centre for those recovering from alcohol and drug abuse or as residential accommodation. As the local councillor, I explained to the council that I had no doubt that the people in my ward wanted to see more residential accommodation in the area. It would be unsuitable to place a drug and rehabilitation centre, which would place local children at risk, in the middle of a residential area.

However, the Greater London council, at that time under the leadership of the Labour party and the present hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone), was very much of a mind that it wanted to introduce such a rehabilitation centre. Only by prevailing on the landowner—the Church Commissioners—were we able to ensure that the future of that block of property was in keeping with the requirements and desires of local people, not the political imperatives of the group in charge at County hall. The planning process did not enable us to do so.

What guarantee will the Minister give tonight that we shall not, at some time, find the new Greater London Authority under the aegis of a group and a mayor who have their own political imperatives, and who seek to ride roughshod over the desires and wishes of a local community whose local council is of a different political hue? That is the key issue, which must be addressed tonight. If it is not, London's success will be in jeopardy.

That success has been recognised as far away as the United States. A few years ago, it was reported in Fortune magazine that

The city once had the highest unemployment of any European capital, but today it has the lowest". When politics intervenes in the planning process, jobs are at stake. Local authorities recognise the local need for jobs, and the local desires of their community, in a way that the previous example of a Greater London authority signally failed to do.

As I understand it, the purpose of amendment No. 135 is to probe the Government to make them aware of those significant concerns. How do they propose to protect people in their communities in London from the GLA's becoming the political tool of people who are politically driven in a different direction?

Mr. Raynsford

It is instructive to note the difference between the tone of the debate on amendment No. 135 and the tone of the debate on the preceding group of amendments.

In the preceding debate, the opposition parties adopted a highly constructive and non-partisan approach, and sought to reflect the genuine concern that we achieve a balance between, on the one hand, the new powers of the Greater London Authority, Metropolitan police authority and mayor and, on the other, the existing arrangements for oversight of the Metropolitan police. By contrast, as we have debated amendment No. 135, the Opposition have reverted to their characteristic partisan line of denigrating the proposal by means of generally wide-of-the-mark generalisations, rhetoric and comments that fly in the face of any logic or understanding of the way in which London operates.

I must tell the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) that I fail to recognise his description of the City of Westminster as a paragon of probity and foresight in planning. Anyone who has experience of the machinations of that authority over the past 10 years would form a very different view.

The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway) said that our proposals in relation to the mayor's planning powers were neither necessary nor coherent. He thought that they would harm London's competitiveness—that they would be bureaucratic. He is completely wrong, and he was obviously not paying attention to the debate earlier this evening about the three principal purposes—the three pillars—of the new authority: a duty to promote economic development and wealth creation, a duty to promote social advancement and a duty to promote environmental improvement. Of course, planning is fundamental to bringing all those three together, because the authority will have an obligation to achieve coherence between its three principal purposes.

The authority will therefore require powers to intervene at a strategic level. That is far from the framework that existed under the old GLC. Much more detailed intervention powers were available to the GLC, and that resulted in unnecessary and sometimes time-wasting conflict between the GLC and the boroughs. We recognise that there was an overlap, and we have sought not to repeat it. We have tried to establish a clear distinction between the strategic level, which will involve the mayor, and the day-to-day handling of planning responsibilities, which will remain with the London boroughs.

If the mayor is to exercise a strategic oversight, he or she must have a means of intervening in the decision-making process where issues of genuine strategic importance are concerned. The special development strategy will set the framework for the mayor's policies but, even with a plan-led system, the success or failure of strategic policies is ultimately determined through individual development control decisions.

We are proposing that the mayor should become a statutory consultee for certain strategic planning applications. That will allow the mayor to represent the pan-London view on those applications. In addition to being a statutory consultee, the mayor will be able to direct a borough to refuse planning permission for those applications on strategic grounds.

Sir Sydney Chapman

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to me for the third time today. If the mayor directs a planning authority to refuse an application, the applicant has the right to appeal to the Secretary of State. If the Secretary of State upholds the view of the applicant and grants planning permission, will the mayor be responsible for the costs involved? If that is the case, why the chimera of pretending that the mayor has any powers at all?

For the third time, I intervene to ask the Minister whether the Government are devolving power. If the mayor acted as the Secretary of State in London on planning matters, whether we agree with that or not, at least it would be clear cut, but that is not the case. The Government are not giving any powers to the Greater London Authority, through either the assembly or the mayor.

Mr. Raynsford

I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, who has considerable expertise in these matters, but he is wrong. There is a need for a strategic Londonwide role. However, we do not propose that that role should replace the power of the Secretary of State. In the case of London uniquely, that would remove the ability of an applicant to appeal to the Secretary of State as the final arbiter. We believe that that final recourse to the Secretary of State should remain, in London as everywhere else.

We are seeking to create a framework in which the mayor can intervene at a strategic level, but we shall maintain the safeguard of the appeal to the Secretary of State. If a matter were considered by the Secretary of State on appeal, the mayor would have to defend his or her direction at any subsequent inquiry and could be liable to costs, if it were found that he or she had acted unreasonably. That is a proper discipline, which would apply in the case of any other authority that had refused permission, where the case was subsequently considered on appeal by the Secretary of State.

A consultation exercise on the type of application on which the mayor should be consulted was issued last year. I published my final response on 15 March. The hon. Member for Croydon, South acknowledged that we had listened to representations during the consultation period, and that we had modified the categories to ensure that only issues of purely strategic significance would be subject to the statutory consultee procedure and therefore the right of direction.

Mr. St. Aubyn

Will the Minister confirm that the assurances that he is giving us will all have to be contained in what is described in the clause as a development order, as those restrictions on the power of the mayor are not contained in the clause?

11.30 pm
Mr. Raynsford

Of course. If the hon. Gentleman is familiar with the planning process, he will recognise that a great deal of detail is inevitably set out in development orders or specific planning policy guidance. Clearly, it would be inappropriate to put that level of detail on the face of legislation, as that would make it difficult to amend at a future date. The hon. Gentleman will know that we debated and discussed the categories of development that might be subject to mayoral powers of direction. We concluded that the categories should be very large-scale development, including major residential developments of more than 500 units or 10 hectares. In a few years, circumstances may lead to the view that that should be amended. Clearly, it will be easier to do so by secondary means, rather than a change in legislation. That is always the case with planning matters and it will be no different for these proposals.

As well as large-scale developments, we also prescribe those that could have an impact over a wide area, those that concern major new infrastructure proposals and those that could have a significant impact on key strategic policies or that may affect key strategic sites. The announcement set out those categories in more detail and will be taken forward through secondary legislation.

Amendment No. 135 undermines the mayor's ability to intervene in those cases. It is not a probing but a wrecking amendment. If it were agreed, it would completely destroy the ability of the mayor to act strategically and prevent him or her from intervening. The amendment would delete from clause 259 the ability of the Secretary of State to give the power of direction to the mayor.

I repeat that it is not our intention to let the mayor interfere in day-to-day matters that are better left to the boroughs. As I explained at length in Committee, our plans are designed to ensure that decisions are taken at the right level. The boroughs will still be the local planning authorities for their areas and, as my response to the consultation exercise made clear, the applications that the mayor will see will be truly strategic and limited in number. We estimate that it will be around 150 to 250 planning applications out of some 70,000 submitted in London each year. That puts it in perspective.

One is talking not about the mayor intervening in the vast majority of cases that are processed by the London boroughs, but about the mayor having the power to intervene as a statutory consultee in only 150 to 200 applications a year. Of course, the mayor will not choose to intervene in many of those cases. We are talking about a limited power, which is focused on the strategic level.

Mr. St. Aubyn

Given that the power is subject to a development order, would it not be unreasonable for a future holder of the hon. Gentleman's post to issue an order that greatly expanded the number of cases that might be considered by the mayor?

Mr. Raynsford

No, as I made it clear, in planning matters, circumstances change. In any sensible democratic society, it is appropriate that there should be a mechanism for changes to be reflected through changing secondary legislation. However, Ministers are accountable to the House and, if they propose changes in secondary legislation, they will be subject to votes in the House. That is the right balance.

As I explained in Committee, we see the power of direction very much as long-stop power, which the mayor would neither need nor wish to use in more than a small proportion of the cases in which he or she would be a statutory consultee. We expect that the mayor will want to work collaboratively with the boroughs. He or she may be content to give some comments on an application drawing attention to strategic matters that the borough should ensure are addressed, but would otherwise be happy to leave it to take the final decision. Alternatively, the mayor may wish to take the opportunity to express support for a proposal, particularly if it furthers or assists the mayor's plans as set out in the special development strategy, or the transport or development strategies.

The argument that our plans will cause undue delay in the processing of applications is also incorrect. We will ensure that the procedures are quick and efficient.

The mayor will be consulted at an early stage, along with other consultees, shortly after the planning application is first submitted. Unless the mayor signals that he or she does not wish to see the application again, the mayor will have a further 14 days within which to issue a direction once the borough has resolved to grant or refuse permission, but before it issues its decision notice. It is an extremely short period of time, but that is necessary to avoid unreasonable delay. However, it gives the mayor the crucial power to exercise a strategic influence.

That is the correct balance if we are—

Mr. Brooke

The Minister said a moment ago that the mayor might use his powers to encourage a particular application. I thought that we had discussed that issue in Committee, when the Government took a contrary view to the one that he just expressed. Where is the legislative cover for what he just said?

Mr. Raynsford

I did not say that the mayor could intervene to require an authority to agree an application. I said that the mayor might wish to encourage an authority to take such a decision. It would be for the authority to decide. The mayor's power of direction is simply a power to require the authority not to grant permission in individual cases. The mayor has wider powers in relation to economic development and transportation and it is precisely in that context that the mayor may well feel that a particular development meets strategic purposes, is desirable and should be encouraged. It would be perfectly proper for the mayor to express that view, but the mayor would have no formal power to require a local authority to agree a planning application on that basis.

I believe that we have struck the right balance. It enables the mayor to pursue the three purposes that we have already debated—economic development, social advancement and environmental improvement. The planning process will enable the mayor to exercise a positive influence so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment. If he does not, I urge the House to reject it.

Mr. Ottaway

The Minister describes amendment No. 135 as a wrecking amendment. The definition of a wrecking amendment is one that would make the system unworkable. To that extent, he is right. I put it to him that, in the view of the professionals that I have consulted, the legislation before the House is unworkable. I advise the Minister to take some professional advice on this matter before the Bill comes back to the House for debates on Lords amendments. There is widespread concern that the situation is not clear at the moment.

As I said in Committee, those in the planning Bar see a lifetime's work emerging out of the Bill. Keen as I am to see the legal profession suitably financed, I do not think that the Bill should be the vehicle for that. We tabled the amendment as a probing amendment to draw to the Government's attention the unease that is felt in planning circles. On that note, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Forward to